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CHAP. XXIV.]

IMPROVEMENTS IN THE LOCOMOTIVES.

311

The "Planet" engine embodied most of the improvements made by Mr. Stephenson and his son between the construction of the "Rocket" and the opening of the railway on the 15th of September. The "Planet" was in the Mersey, but not landed on that day. This engine exhibited in one combination nearly all the improvements which the inventors had by this time effected, — the blast pipe, the tubular boiler, the horizontal cylinders inside the smoke-box (a great improvement on the "Rocket "), and the cranked axle, together with a fire-box firmly fixed to the boiler. In the "Rocket" the fire-box was only screwed against the boiler, allowing a considerable leakage of air which had not passed through the fire. The tubes and furnace of the "Planet" gave a heating surface of 407 feet. The cylinder was 11 inches in diameter, with a 16-inch stroke; the boiler was 61 feet long, by 3 feet in diameter; the four wheels were 5 and 3 feet in diameter respectively.

On the 4th of December, the "Planet" took the first load of merchandise from Liverpool to Manchester, consisting of 18 waggon-loads of cotton, 200 barrels of flour, 63 sacks of oatmeal, and 34 sacks of malt. The total load, exclusive of the engine, was 80 tons, and it was taken to Manchester, in the face of a strong, adverse wind, in two hours and thirtynine minutes, which was considered an exceedingly successful trip. Previous to this, however, the speed of the "Planet" had been tested in bringing up a cargo of voters from Manchester to Liverpool, on the occasion of the contested election there, when she performed the journey between the two places in sixty minutes.

The next important improvement in the locomotive was made in the "Samson," which was placed upon the line about the beginning of 1831. In this engine the plan of coupling the fore and hind wheels of the engine was adopted; by which means the adhesion of the wheels on the rails was

more effectually secured, and thus the hauling force of the locomotive was made more available. This mode of coupling the wheels was found to be a great improvement, and it has since been adopted in all engines constructed for drawing heavy loads, where power is of greater consequence than speed. On the 25th of February, the "Samson” drew a train of thirty waggons, weighing 151 tons exclusive of the weight of the tender, between Liverpool and Manchester, at the rate of about twenty miles an hour on the level parts of the railway. In this engine the blast, the tubes, and furnace were so contrived, that the consumption of coke was reduced to only about one-third of a pound per ton per mile.

The rapid progress thus made will show that Mr. Stephenson's inventive faculties were kept fully on the stretch; but his labours were amply repaid by the result. He was, doubtless, to some extent stimulated by the number of competitors who about the same time appeared as improvers of the locomotive engine. Of these the most prominent were the Messrs. Braithwaite and Ericsson, whose engine, the "Novelty," had excited such high expectations at the Rainhill competition. The directors of the railway, desirous of giving all parties a fair chance, ordered from those makers two engines on the same model; but their performances not proving satisfactory, they were finally withdrawn. One of them slipped off the rails near the Sankey viaduct, and was nearly thrown over the embankment. Their chief defect consisted in their inability to keep up a sufficient supply of steam for regular work; the steam-blast not being adopted in the engines. Indeed the superiority of Mr. Stephenson's locomotives over all others that had yet been tried, induced the directors of the railway to require that the engines supplied to them by other builders should be constructed after the same model. It is now an invariable practice with railway companies to determine the kind of locomotive with which they are to be

CHAP. XXIV.]

ALLEGED LOCOMOTIVE MONOPOLY.

313

supplied by contractors; but in those days it was positively made a ground of complaint, against both the company and the engineer, that this salutary precaution was adopted. The Liverpool directors had given every opportunity for trials, from Dr. Booth's "Velocipede” (which knocked itself to pieces on the line) to the "Rocket; " and having ascertained by actual experience the best kind of engine for their purpose, they could not, amidst the bustle and responsibilities of a large and increasing traffic, allow their railway to be used as a practising ground for the host of experimenters and inventors who were springing up on all sides. They therefore closed the line against further trials of new inventions.

It was afterwards made a ground of complaint against Mr. Stephenson in an influential publication*, that he had obtained a monopoly of the engines supplied to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, as well as of the appointments of the workmen employed on the line. At the same time the writer admitted the rapidity of the improvements made in the locomotives, notwithstanding the alleged monopoly; for he stated that during the year and a half which followed the opening, "the engines have been constantly varied in their weight and proportions, in their magnitude and form, as the experience of each successive month has indicated: as defects became manifest they were remedied; improvements suggested were adopted; and each quarter produced engines of such increased power and efficiency, that their predecessors were abandoned, not because they were worn out, but because they had been outstripped in the rapid march of improvement." What more than this could have been done? Granting, for a moment, that the alleged "monopoly" had any existence in point of fact,-if it tended in any way to

stimulate that rapidity in the improvement of the locomotive, which the reviewer so distinctly admitted to have been effected, its temporary adoption in favour of the indefatigable and industrious Stephensons would have been amply justified. But the simple truth was, that the Newcastle factory was at that time the only source from which efficient engines could be obtained. The directors were fully alive to the importance of inducing competition in this new branch of manufacture; and they offered every inducement to mechanical engineers, with the view of enlarging the sources from which they could draw their supplies of engines. And so soon as they could rely upon the quality of the article supplied to them by other firms, they distributed their orders indiscriminately and impartially.

Mr. Thomas Gray * also proclaimed his opposition to the Stephenson "monopoly," but on another ground. The Stephenson rails were smooth, and consequently the engines were adapted for travelling on them at high speeds; whereas Mr. Gray was still an adherent of the long-exploded cograil of Blenkinsop. He urged that the railroad should be greased, and cog-rails placed outside the smooth rails, — the propulsive agency working in the former, while the burden of the engine travelled on the latter. "It will certainly," said he, "answer the private views of engineers, mechanics, and others employed in manufacturing rails, steam-engines, &c., to recommend the application of numerous engines and the most costly machinery." And he added:-" Had the recent grand feat, accomplished by the two new ponderous engines, been performed by means of cog-rails, I do not hesitate to assert that the very same engines would have effected five times more; "-which assertion serves further

* Mechanics' Magazine, 1831, vol. xv. p. 167. The "Mechanics' Magazine" supported the cog-rail as opposed to the smooth rail, probably because the smooth rail was adopted by Stephenson. See vol. xv. p. 190.

CHAP. XXIV.]

SELECTION OF WORKMEN.

315

to prove, that the founding of the modern railway system could not have been effected by Thomas Gray.

The charge brought against Mr. Stephenson, as engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, of employing men under him to carry out his instructions, whom he knew, in preference to persons belonging to the parishes through which the line passed, whom he did not know, was of a piece with many other charges gravely advanced against him at the time. Even the drivers of stage-coaches were not then selected by the proprietors because they belonged to the respective parishes through which the coaches ran, but because they knew something of stage-coach driving. But in the case of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, it was insisted that the local population had the first claim to be employed; and the engineer was strongly censured "for introducing into the country a numerous body of workmen in various capacities, strangers to the soil and to the surrounding population, thus wresting from the hands of those to whom they had naturally belonged, all the benefits which the enterprise and capital of the district in this case conferred." But the charge was grossly exaggerated, and, for the most part, unfounded. As respected the working of the engines, it was natural and proper that Mr. Stephenson, who was responsible for their efficiency, should employ men to work them who knew something about their construction and mode of action. And as the only locomotive railways previously at work in England were those in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, he of course sought there for engine-drivers, stokers, and other workmen of practical experience on railways, to work the Liverpool and Manchester line. But it was from the first one of Mr. Stephenson's greatest difficulties to find able workmen enough to make his engines

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