Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site. When heated, water turns to an invisible vapor known as steam. The volume of water expands as it turns to steam inside the boiler, creating a high pressure. The expansion of steam pushes the pistons that connect to the driving wheels that operate the locomotive. Coal or oil are the fuels used for heating the water coal is shown in the diagram.
Coal is carried in the tender of the locomotive and is hand-shoveled by the fireman into the firebox. Water is carried in the tender in a tank surrounding the coal. The water passes to the locomotive through a device called an injector. The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive, was the 3 ft mm gauge Coalbrookdale Locomotive , built by Trevithick in It was constructed for the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire in the United Kingdom though no record of it working there has survived.
On 21 February , the first recorded steam-hauled railway journey took place as another of Trevithick's locomotives hauled a train along the Error: gauge specification "4ft4in" not known tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil , to Abercynon in South Wales. Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency.
Trevithick visited the Newcastle area in and had a ready audience of colliery coal mine owners and engineers. The visit was so successful that the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of the steam locomotive.
Trevithick continued his own steam propulsion experiments through another trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in In , Matthew Murray's successful twin-cylinder rack locomotive Salamanca first ran on the edge-railed rack-and-pinion Middleton Railway.
Another well-known early locomotive was Puffing Billy , built —14 by engineer William Hedley. It was intended to work on the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne. This locomotive is the oldest preserved, and is on static display in the Science Museum, London. He also constructed The Duke in for the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway, which was the first steam locomotive to work in Scotland.
In , George Stephenson built Locomotion No. This success led to the company emerging as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the UK, US and much of Europe.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for passenger and goods trains. Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from Great Britain, including first the Stourbridge Lion and later the John Bull still the oldest operable engine-powered vehicle in the United States of any kind, as of however a domestic locomotive-manufacturing industry was quickly established.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb in , designed and built by Peter Cooper, was the first US-built locomotive to run in America, although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction, rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The DeWitt Clinton was also built in the s.
Then on 5 May , the first line in Belgium linked Mechelen and Brussels. The locomotive was named The Elephant. In Germany, the first working steam locomotive was a rack-and-pinion engine, similar to the Salamanca , designed by the British locomotive pioneer John Blenkinsop. It was the first locomotive to be built on the European mainland and the first steam-powered passenger service; curious onlookers could ride in the attached coaches for a fee.
It is portrayed on a New Year's badge for the Royal Foundry dated However, it again broke the rails and Trevithick was forced to abandon the demonstration after just two months.
Blenkinsop believed that a locomotive light enough to move under its own power would be too light to generate sufficient adhesion, so he designed a rack-and-pinion railway for the line. This was despite the fact that Trevithick demonstrated successful adhesion locomotives a decade before. The single rack ran outside the narrow-gauge edge-rail tracks and was engaged by a cog-wheel on the left side of the locomotive. The cog-wheel was driven by two cylinders embedded into the top of the center-flue boiler.
Four such locomotives were built for the railway and they worked until the early s. The proprietors of Wylam Colliery wanted to abolish horse-drawn trains in favor of steam. In , William Hedley, a manager at the colliery, employed Trevithick to build a steam locomotive. However, it proved too heavy for the wooden track.
William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth another colliery employee designed a locomotive in that became known as Puffing Billy. In an Act of Parliament was approved for a tramway between Stockton and Darlington. The railway was also empowered to carry passengers in addition to coal and general merchandise.
The line was 25 miles 40 km in length and had passing loops along its single track and four branch lines to collieries. It opened in Four locomotives named Locomotion were constructed and were effectively beam engines on wheels with vertical cylinders. In the painting, crowds are watching the inaugural train cross the Skerne Bridge in Darlington. The movement of coal to ships rapidly became a lucrative business and the line was soon extended to a new port and town at Middlesbrough.
While coal wagons were hauled by steam locomotives from the start, passengers were carried in coaches drawn by horses until carriages hauled by steam locomotives were introduced in The first public steam railway in Scotland was the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway. An Act of Parliament authorizing the railway was passed in and it opened in Further, horse-drawn traffic could use the Stockton and Darlington upon payment of a toll.
However, it used cable haulage by stationary steam engines over much of its length, with steam locomotives restricted to the level stretch. These were arranged as an open contest that would let them see all the locomotive candidates in action, with the choice to follow. Rocket was the first locomotive to use a multi-tubular boiler, which allowed more effective heat transfer from the exhaust gases to the water.
It was also the first to use a blastpipe, where used steam from the cylinders discharges into the smokebox beneath the chimney to increase the draft of the fire.
Later conjectural drawing of the Rainhill Trials: in the foreground is Rocket and in the background are Sans Pareil right and Novelty, author unknown, the Illustrated London News. The Stephenson brothers were accordingly given the contract to produce locomotives for the railway.
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