George Stephenson (25 page)

While Robert worked on the
Rocket
, George was completing the great tunnel into Liverpool. During the summer of 1829 it opened on certain days and became a great attraction for the people of Liverpool. George had the roof whitewashed and gas lamps hung at twenty-five-yard intervals, and for one shilling the public could inspect its entire length. On 21 August, William Huskisson was one of several important visitors, watched by a crowd of three thousand, who visited the tunnel. He praised Stephenson's work, envying him for ‘the honour of the direction and completion of such an undertaking'. He recommended that the public should also go and visit the great work being done across Chat Moss, at the Manchester end of the line.

George was very pleased with the compliments and described the visit in a letter to Longridge in Newcastle.

Many of the first families in the County were waiting to witness the procession which accompanied by a band of Music occupying one of the waggons descended in grand style through the Tunnel. The whole went off most pleasantly without the slightest accident attending our various movements. Mr Huskisson and the Directors dined with Mr Lawrence [the Chairman] in the evening. The Engineer was one of the party and a most splendid set out there was I assure you. The evening was spent in a very pleasing manner.

The
Rocket
was ready on 12 September, when it was taken to pieces at the Newcastle works and put in carts and sent by road to Carlisle. It went from there by barge down the canal to Bowness and thence by sea to Liverpool.

Ten locomotive engines had at one time been intending to take part in the Rainhill trials but on the official opening day, 8 October, only five were ready. It was organised like a race meeting, with the five iron horses in their own colours, each limbering up to the delight of the large crowd in the grandstand and the enclosures. They each had to go up and down the course twenty times, a distance in all of sixty miles. There was, amongst many other conditions, a weight limit of six tons. A race card gave the details of each engine.

Timothy Burstall's
Perseverance
was not powerful enough to be taken seriously and was damaged in transit from Edinburgh. It never managed to do a proper trial run and was soon withdrawn.
Cyclopede
was a joke entrant, a piece of eccentric entertainment rather than a serious contestant, made by Thomas Shaw Brandreth, one of the Liverpool company's leading shareholders and a friend of George's. The motive power was a horse, which certainly wasn't new, but its method was ingenious. It walked up and down a moving platform, like a treadmill, and so turned the wheels of the machine.

Timothy Hackworth's
Sans Pareil
was a good engine, but everything went wrong. Firstly he'd had to farm out many of its pieces, not having enough facilities at his engine sheds at Shildon, on the Darlington Line. The boiler was made for him by Longridge at Bedlington and the cylinders by Robert Stephenson at Forth Street. (His supporters said, quite wrongly, that he had been deliberately supplied with inferior parts.) Hackworth experienced endless breakdowns and in any case his engine had not complied with all the conditions.

The real threat to the
Rocket
came from
Novelty
, the London entrant, built by Braithwaite and Ericsson (a Swedish inventor) and named after a theatre. One of its supporters was Vignoles, the engineer George had quarrelled with. They'd built it in seven weeks and had been unable to try it out beforehand as there were no railways in the London area. It was considered by far the most beautiful of the entrants, the lightest and fastest looking, and the large crowd took to it immediately.

The crowd included many engineering experts, critics as well as enthusiasts for the cause of locomotion, from Britain and abroad. Americans in particular had been sending regular deputations to look at the Liverpool line for some time. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company had sent its first party of engineers in 1828 and they had representatives at the Rainhill trials. They planned to publish a full report, which they did, using it as a means of whipping up support for their own railway. Horatio Allen, on behalf of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, a gentleman who was to become one of the greatest engineers in the history of the American railways, was present in person at the trials.

For George this was the climax of fifteen years' work on locomotives, the final test of all those engines he'd developed since
Blucher
in 1814. He was not being tested verbally, as in parliament, on his education or his knowledge as an engineer, but where it really mattered – in producing results. This was to be a straight competition and there was nothing he liked better than a contest to show his so-called betters that he was right and they were wrong. If he turned out to be wrong, well, people might, perhaps, let him build more railway lines but who would want his locomotives? Or anybody's locomotives, come to that.

For the vast majority of the crowd it was simply a gala day, a cross between Le Mans and Ascot. Comparisons with a horse race meeting were used by most observers in the newspapers. The directors encouraged the festive atmosphere, seeing it as a public relations exercise for their exciting new railway as well as a way of publicly and finally testing the value of locomotives. The reporter on the
Liverpool Courier
describing the opening day, 6 October, was highly delighted by what he saw.

Wednesday, Oct. 7 1829

The Directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Rail-Road having offered, in the month of April last, a prize of £250 for the best Locomotive Engine, the trial of the carriages which had been constructed to contend for the prize commenced yesterday. The running ground was on the Manchester side of the Rainhill Bridge, at a place called Kenrick's Cross, about ten miles from Liverpool. At this place the Rail-Road runs on a dead level, and formed, of course, a fine spot for trying the comparative speed of the carriages. The directors had made suitable preparations for this important as well as interesting experiment of the powers of Locomotive Carriages. For the accommodation of the ladies who might visit the course (to use the language of the turf), a booth was erected on the south side of the Rail-Road, equi-distant from the extremities of the trial ground. Here a band of music was stationed, and amused the company during the day by playing pleasing and favourite airs. The directors, each of whom wore a white ribbon in his buttonhole, arrived on the course shortly after ten o'clock in the forenoon, having come from Huyton in cars drawn by Mr. Stephenson's Locomotive Steam Carriage, which moved up the inclined plane from thence with considerable velocity. Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, in great numbers, arrived from Liverpool and Warrington, St. Helen's and Manchester, as well as from the surrounding country, in vehicles of every description. Indeed all the roads presented, on this occasion, scenes similar to those which roads leading to race-courses usually present during the day of sport. The pedestrians were extremely numerous, and crowded all the roads which conducted to the raceground. The spectators lined both sides of the road, for the distance of a mile and a half; and, although the men employed on the line, amounting to nearly 200, acted as special constables, with orders to keep the crowd off the course, all their efforts to carry their orders into effect were rendered nugatory, by the people persisting in walking on the ground. It is difficult to form an estimate of the number of individuals who had congregated to behold the experiment; but there could not, at a moderate calculation, be less than 10,000. Some gentlemen even went so far as to compute them at 15,000.

Never, perhaps, on any previous occasion, were so many scientific gentlemen and practical engineers collected together on one spot as there were on the Rail-Road yesterday. The interesting and important nature of the experiments to be tried had drawn them from all parts of the kingdom, to be present at this contest of Locomotive Carriages, as well as to witness an exhibition whose results may alter the whole system of our existing internal communications, many and important as they are, substituting an agency whose ultimate effects can scarcely be anticipated; for although the extraordinary change in our river and coast navigation, by steam-boats, may afford some rule of comparison, still the effect of wind and waves, and a resisting medium, combine in vessels to present obstructions to the full exercise of the gigantic power which will act on a Railway unaffected by the seasons, and unlimited but by the demand for its application.

There were only one or two public-houses in the vicinity of the trial-ground. These were, of course, crowded with company as the day advanced, particularly the Rail-Road Tavern, which was literally crammed with company. The landlady had very prudently and providently reserved one room for the accommodation of the better class visitors. The good lady will, we imagine, have substantial reasons for remembering the trial of Locomotive Carriages. But there is nothing like making hay while the sun shines.

When the trials began, the tough no-nonsense journalists from the technical press came into their own, ignoring any human interest or flowery descriptions of the crowds but getting straight down to the hard facts – or what they saw as hard facts. Though one hesitates to accuse any journalist of biased reporting, it would seem that the worthy reporter from
Mechanics' Magazine
was determined from the beginning that
Novelty
was going to win.

The engine which made the first trial, was the ‘Rocket' of Mr. Robert Stephenson (the son, we believe, of Mr. George Stephenson, the engineer of the railway). It is a large and strongly-built engine, and went with a velocity, which, as long as the spectators had nothing to contrast it with, they thought surprising enough. It drew a weight of twelve tons, nine cwt, at the rate of ten miles four chains in an hour, (just exceeding the stipulated maximum,) and when the weight was detached from it, went at a speed of about eighteen miles an hour. The faults most perceptible in this engine, were a great inequality in its velocity, and a very partial fulfilment of the condition that it should ‘effectually consume its own smoke'.

The next engine that exhibited its powers was ‘The Novelty' of Messrs. Braithwaite and Ericsson, The great lightness of this engine, (it is about one half lighter than Mr. Stephenson's,) its compactness, and its beautiful workmanship, excited universal admiration; a sentiment speedily changed into perfect wonder, by its truly marvellous performances. It was resolved to try first its speed merely; that is at what rate it would go, carrying only its complement of coke and water, with Messrs. Braithwaite and Ericsson to manage it. Almost at once, it darted off at the amazing velocity of twenty-eight miles an hour, and it actually did one mile in the incredibly short space of one minute and 53 seconds! Neither did we observe any appreciable falling off in the rate of speed; it was uniform, steady, and continuous. Had the railway been completed, the engine would, at this rate, have gone nearly the whole way from Liverpool to Manchester within the hour; and Mr. Braithwaite has, indeed, publicly offered to stake a thousand pounds, that as soon as the road is opened, he will perform the entire distance in that time.

It was now proposed to make a trial of the ‘Novelty', with three times its weight attached to it; but through some inattention as to the supply of water and coke, a great delay took place in preparing it for its second trip, and by the time all was ready, the day was drawing so near to a close, that the directors thought it proper to defer the prosecution of the competition till the following day.

From other contemporaneous reports, the faults in
Novelty
were due to slightly more than ‘inattention' and the directors were more than kind in allowing
Novelty
's endless delays. It was also more than unfair of the gentleman from the
Mechanics' Magazine
to compare
Novelty
's great speed travelling on its own with
Rocket
travelling with a train of weighted wagons behind it. A vital condition of the trials was that each engine should pull three times its own weight.

However, the
Novelty
did look exceedingly beautiful, so everyone agreed, and when it reached its amazing velocity of twenty-eight mph, the
Liverpool Mercury
representative was one of the many who fell in love with it.

It seemed, indeed, to fly, presenting one of the most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world has ever beheld. It actually made one giddy to look at it, and filled thousands with lively fears for the safety of the individuals who were on it, and who seemed not to run along the earth, but to fly, as it were, on the ‘wings of the wind'. It is a most sublime sight; a sight, indeed, which the individuals who beheld it will not soon forget.

Alas for the
Novelty
, it was unable to show its flying feats the next day, because of various delays and faults, nor the following days, though it did finally do one round of three miles on the Saturday, the last day of the first week's trials. It couldn't manage a second round because of an accident to one of its steam pipes. During this first week,
Rocket
was the only engine to consistently go up and down the trial stretch when told to do so, carrying its full load in accordance with the rules. While it waited for the laggards who were messing around with their engines, doing little spurts then collapsing,
Rocket
did extra exhibition runs, showing off its speed, but the crowds had taken
Novelty
to its heart and still considered
Rocket
too big, too ugly, too dirty.