Who Invented the Locomotive Engine?; With a Review of Smiles's Life of Stephenson - Oswald Dodd Hedley

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858. Excerpt: ... FEELING OF GLOOM ON THE SUBJECT. 19 that the locomotive engine was in the hands of two persons between whom such a cordial and good understanding existed. The slightest disagreement might have turned the scale. I cannot but confess that there was about this time a feeling of gloom on the subject. The popular sentiment was most unequivocally expressed. "Abandon! abandon!" was the cry. It is a fact that I would impress on the reader that the idea of the engines conveying the coal waggons on the railway was everywhere ridiculed. Although the performance of the first engine did not by any means afford room for congratulation, still the circumstances were such as ought not to have induced despair. The great principle of locomotion upon which the construction of the engine had been based had never for a moment been called in question. Poor as its performance was considered, it was traversing the line. Although it could not travel, without difficulty, on the ascending portions of the road, this certainly did not arise from the want of friction at the surface of the rails. Not less obvious was it to Mr. Hedley that the supply of steam at command was scarcely sufficient to test the principle at all, much less to demolish it. The question, therefore, resolved itself into one of engine power--a grave subject for any engineer, where the railway was constructed of the cast-iron plate-rail, a weak description of rail, neither subjected, nor in fact adapted, to a greater stress than that of a coal-waggon drawn by a horse. The weight of the cast-iron rail was 36 lbs. to the yard. But there the railway was; and it formed one of the many grave, in fact, almost insuperable obstacles under which locomotion was to be established. Yet, upon that line depended its fate with res...