WHO BEGAN RAILROADS?—"PUFFING BILLY."
Familiar as it has become to us, who does not stop to look with interest
at the puffing, snorting, screaming steam-horse? And who does not
rejoice in the iron-rail, which binds together, with its slender
threads, the north and the south, and makes neighbours of the east and
the west?
"Who _began_ railroads?" ask the boys again and again.
The first idea of the modern railroad had its birth at a colliery nearly
two hundred years ago. In order to lighten the labour of the horses, the
colliers laid straight pieces of wood into the road leading from the pit
to the river, where the coal was discharged; and the waggons were found
to run so much easier, that one horse could draw four or five chaldrons.
As wood quickly wore out, and moreover was liable to rot, the next step
was nailing plates of iron on the wooden rails; which gave them for a
time the name of "plate-way roads." A Mr. Outram making still further
improvements, they were called "Outram roads," or, for shortness' sake,
"tram-roads;" and tram-roads came into general use at the English
collieries.
"There's mischief in those tram-roads," said a large canal owner,
foreseeing they would one day drive canal stock quite out of the market.
Improvements thus far had centred on the roads. To convoy heavy loads
easier and faster was the point aimed at. Nobody had yet thought of
self-going trains. Watt, the father of steam-engines, said
steam-carriages might be built. He, however, never tried one, but rather
left the idea to sprout in the brain of an old pupil of his, William
Murdock, who did construct a very small one, running on thin wheels, and
heated by a lamp. It was a curious success in its way, and set other
minds thinking.
One of these was a tin-miner of Cornwall, Captain Trovethick, a friend
of Murdock, who joined a cousin of his in getting a patent for building
a steam-carriage. It was built, and an odd piece of machinery it was. It
ran on four wheels over a common road, looked like a stage-coach, and
delighted both the inventor and his friends.
They determined to exhibit it at London. While on its journey, driving
it one day at the top of its speed, they saw a toll-gate in the
distance. Not being able to check it in time, bump it went against the
gate, which flew open in a trice, leaving the affrighted toll-man, in
answer to their inquiry, "How much to pay?" only able to gasp out,
"No—nothing to pay! Drive off as fast as you can! Nothing to pay!"
It reached London in safety, and was some time on exhibition. Multitudes
flocked to see it, and some called it a fiery dragon.
"Ah," said Sir Humphrey Davy, very much interested in the invention, "I
hope to see the captain's dragons on all the roads of England yet."
But the captain exhibited it only as a curiosity, the unevenness of the
roads rendering it for all practical purposes a failure; and he had
neither pluck nor genius enough to lay or clear a track for it himself.
This was in 1803.
The idea, however, was in England, lodging itself here and there in busy
brains; until, at last, a colliery owner in Newcastle, seeing the great
advantage of having a locomotive on his tram-roads, determined to try
what _he_ could do. Accordingly, he had one built after the Cornish
captain's model. It burst up at starting. Noways baffled, he tried
again. The engine proved a clumsy affair, moved at a snail's pace, often
got off the rails, and at length, voted by the workmen a "perfect
plague," it was taken off. The unsuccessful inventor was called a fool
by his neighbours, and his efforts an apt illustration that "the fool
and his money are soon parted." In spite of failure, Mr. Blackett had
faith that the thing _could_ be done. He built a third, and ran it on
the tram-road that passed by old Bob Stephenson's cottage door. And
George at his colliery, seven miles off, as you may suppose, listened to
every account of it with profound interest. Over he went, as often as he
could, to see "Black Billy," as the locomotive was called—a rough
specimen of machinery at best, doing very little service beyond what a
good horse could do.
George carried "Black Billy" back in his mind to Killingworth, studying
its defects, and laying plans to improve it. I do not know how long he
was in coming to it, but he at length gave it as his opinion that he
could make a better "travelling engine" than that.
Tidings came to Killingworth about this time that the trial of a new
engine was to take place on a certain day at Leeds, and George did not
lose the chance of being present. Though the engine moved no faster than
three miles an hour, its constructer counted it a success. It proved,
however, unsteady and unreliable, and at last blew up, which was the end
of it.
What did George think then? He more than ever wanted to try _his_ hand
at the business. Lord Ravensworth, knowing enough of Stephenson to have
faith in him, hearing of this, advanced means for the enterprise. Good
tools and good workmen were alike wanting; but after much labour,
alteration, and anxiety, in ten months' time the engine was completed
and put on the railway, July 25, 1814.
Although the best yet made, it was awkward and slow. It carried eight
loaded waggons of thirty tons weight at a speed not above four miles an
hour. The want of springs occasioned a vast deal of jolting, which
damaged the machinery, and at the close of a year's trial it was found
about as costly as horse-power.
How to increase the power of his engine? that was the puzzling question
which George studied to answer. He wrestled with it day and night, and
at length determined to try again. In due time another was built,
"Puffing Billy," which most persons looked upon as a marvel; but,
shaking their heads, they prophesied it would make a terrible blow-up
some day. "Puffing Billy," however, went to work, and worked steadily
on—a vast advance on all preceding attempts. It attracted little or no
attention outside the narrow circle of the collieries. The great men of
England did not know that, in a far-off nook of the realm, there was
slowly generating a power, under the persistent thought of an humble
working-man, which before many years would revolutionize the trade of
the kingdom, and create a new source of wealth.
[Illustration: GEORGE STEPHENSON'S FIRST ENGINE.]
"Puffing Billy," in fact, humble as its pretensions were, has proved to
have been the type of all locomotives since.
[Illustration: "PUFFING BILLY."]
Had George Stephenson satisfied himself? No. His evenings were chiefly
spent at home with his son Robert, now under him in the colliery,
studying and discussing together how to evoke the hidden power yet pent
up in "Puffing Billy." The son was even more sanguine than his father,
and many an amendment had "Billy" to undergo to satisfy the quick
intellect and practical judgment of the youth.
Mr. Stephenson, delighted with Robert's scientific tastes and skill, and
ever alive to the deficiencies of his own education, was anxious to give
him still further advantages. For this purpose he took him from a
promising post at the colliery, and sent him to the University of
Edinburgh.
Here he enjoyed a six months' course of study; and so well prepared was
he for it by his well-formed habits of application and thinking, that he
gained in six months as much as many a student did in three years.
Certain it was his father felt amply repaid for the draft it made on his
purse, when Robert reappeared at the cottage, in the spring, with a
prize for successful scholarship in mathematics. He was eighteen then.