Full Steam Ahead: How the Railways Made Britain. Peter Ginn
The Puffing Billy locomotive was made in 1813 under William Hedley’s patent No. 3666 for the Wylam colliery.
Puffing Billy is the oldest surviving locomotive in the world. It began work in 1814 at the Wylam colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne, hauling wagonloads of coal from the mine to Staithes landing quay on the river Tyne. The engine carried on doing this until 1862. Like the railways themselves, locomotives were designed for industry. Of course, the investment in building these still quite experimental engines was large, but so too were the potential profits. Transport costs contributed very substantially to the price of a commodity as heavy as coal. Just as slate had a ready and waiting market at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so too did coal. The steam engines built by James Watt, Richard Trevithick and others were dotted around numerous mines and quarries, mills and foundries – and all ran on coal. Meanwhile, domestic demand for coal was also growing, as towns and cities with soaring populations found themselves outstripping the local supply of firewood. The Wylam colliery owner realized that if he could cut his transport costs and therefore his prices, he would have no trouble selling much larger volumes of coal. Like many of his competitors, he already owned an iron-topped wooden railway with wagons hauled by horses, but he could see the possibilities in the new technology and was willing to invest.
A gigantic heap of coal at a modern coal-powered power station in Helsinki, Finland. It is the sheer volume of coal required for energy that has driven so much haulage technology over the decades.
A painting of a British coal mine pit head in 1820. Note the combined use of equine power, manpower and the great new innovation – steam.
Initially, Wylam colliery also had trouble with the weight of the engine (eight tons), which damaged rails, but they persevered. Puffing Billy was one of three engines that ran on the line and was designed by a team that included the engineer Thomas Hedley, the engineman Jonathan Forster, the blacksmith Timothy Hackworth and the colliery owner Christopher Blackett. Such collaboration between men of very different social backgrounds and classes is a real feature of the early history of the railways. They were dealing with cutting-edge technology and there was no time for vested interests to be indulged. Expertise, intelligence and enthusiasm were welcome wherever they were found (although, of course, not from women…).
DIFFERENT TYPES OF COAL
Not all coal is the same. Stand in the yards of any of the preserved railways or at any steam fair in the country and you will hear grumbling about ‘the wrong sort’ of coal. Every coal deposit has a different chemical composition that affects how much energy it releases when burnt, how quickly and hotly it burns, and how much tar and smoke it produces in the process.
Steam engines require the very best stuff – the clean-burning coals that will not coat the firebox and boiler tubes with tar. They also need coal that is highly calorific, giving the engines the energy they need to work, and they need it to have a very low water content. From the very beginning of the era of steam railways, south Wales had a reputation for producing top quality ‘steam coal’ – particularly the area around Merthyr Tydfil. Domestic fires do not have quite the same need for high-end anthracite type coals; they might burn better using good coal, but they can work on much cheaper, dirtier, wetter and less calorific types. The cheapest varieties of coal are the brown coals that are halfway between peat and anthracite, but even the best ‘house coals’ are cheaper and of lower quality than ‘steam coal’.
Consequently, throughout the days of steam travel, there was a thriving cross-country trade in different types of coal. It was perfectly common for a colliery that produced mainly domestic coal to have to bring in steam coal in order to fire its pumping engines and locomotives.
Many of the intervening locomotives between Trevithick’s anonymous engine and Puffing Billy moved on a form of rack and pinion system in order to maintain traction. However, the Wylam colliery engines had smooth wheels and ran upon a smooth track. Their success as working vehicles proved once and for all that on gentle inclines iron wheels upon iron track provided plenty of grip – although in slippery conditions, a little sand sprinkled onto the tracks every now and again could be helpful. Moving at what now seems a very stately five miles per hour, Puffing Billy made quite a visual impact. Upon a casual glance, the engine presents a rather confused picture, with rods, beams and shafts sticking up and moving about in several directions at once. There is certainly no indication of streamlining, or much in the way of facilities for the crew. In fact, Puffing Billy looks much more like a slightly flimsy static engine mounted upon an astonishingly sturdy cart with a chimney bolted on the front. You can even see large cog-wheels beneath the cart bed. Behind it ran another little wagon full of coal, and out in front of the engine ran a second one, carrying a large barrel full of water. Unsurprisingly, considering the rather precarious-looking arrangement of rods and beams, the engine wobbles and judders rather a lot when it is in motion. Many people think that the phrase ‘to run like Billy-o’ was inspired by Puffing Billy. There is no doubt that in 1814 it was considered to be a fast machine – and to this day all that shaking about still gives a sense of bustle.
The Rainhill Trials, October 1829. These were conducted to find a locomotive for the world’s first fully steam-hauled railway – the Liverpool and Manchester – which opened the following year.
The Rocket is still the most famous steam engine in the world. Built by the father and son team George and Robert Stephenson, it set the world speed record in 1829 at the Rainhill Trials, when it reached 36 miles per hour. These speeds seem so slow now to us, almost two hundred years later. However, in 1829 no one on earth had ever travelled faster than a horse could gallop – and most people had never even owned a horse to gallop upon. Only fifteen years previously, Puffing Billy had been considered speedy at just five miles per hour, and the Stephensons themselves were surprised at Rocket’s performance. It was also a considerably better-looking machine than poor old Puffing Billy. Much of the confusion of beams, rods and shafts had gone – instead, this engine looked sleek and punchy. The Stephensons had created something quite revolutionary, mixing together their own unique vision with everything they had learned from a host of other engineers. In part, the Stephensons’ success stemmed from their understanding that this engine needed to do something quite different from all those that had gone before – namely, carry passengers. Of course, many people had ridden in wagons pulled by steam engines before on an ad hoc basis, but passengers and their speedy transit were the challenge that the Liverpool and Manchester railway had set. Their business model did not involve moving coal or slate from mine to dock: it involved the linking of two cities, the Liverpool and Manchester of their name. Yes, they expected there to be freight on board the trains, but they were also looking for passenger traffic. The company set up the competition to decide who would get the contract to build the new locomotives for their railway. The rules were clear. Firstly, there was a weight restriction to prevent damage to the rails, which as we have seen, was a recurrent problem at this time. The passengers were to be carried a full sixty miles. This, too, was a challenge. Early engines such as Puffing Billy were designed for travelling quite short distances, averaging around fifteen miles in one stretch, and needed to stop and refill with water in between runs. However, the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester railway company were looking for reliability and speed, so that they could run regular services.
The Rocket was designed by Robert Stephenson and built at his Forth Street works in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1829. Although not the first steam locomotive, essentially it was the template for most other steam engines for the next 150 years.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, pictured in1831, several months after its