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The final abandonment of Trevithick’s locomotive at Pen-y-darran perhaps contributed to deter him from proceeding further; but he had the wooden tramway taken up in 1808, and a plate-way of cast-iron laid down instead—a single line furnished with sidings to enable the laden waggons to pass the empty ones.
Stephenson’s endeavours having been attended with such marked success in the adaptation of locomotive power to railways, his attention was called by many of his friends, about the year 1818, to the application of steam to travelling on common roads. It was from this point that the locomotive started, Trevithick’s first engine having been constructed with this special object.
This road-locomotive of Trevithick’s was one of the first high-pressure working engines constructed on the principle of moving a piston by the elasticity of steam against the pressure only of the atmosphere. Such an engine had been described by Leopold, though in his apparatus it was proposed that the pressure should act only on one side of the piston.
In Trevithick’s engine the piston was not only raised, but was also depressed by the action of the steam, being in this respect an entirely original invention, and of great merit. The steam was admitted from the boiler under the piston moving in a cylinder, impelling it upward.
This locomotive was constructed by Thomas Waters, of Gateshead, under the superintendence of Jonathan Foster, Mr. Blackett’s principal engine-wright. It was a combination of Trevithick’s and Blenkinsop’s engines; but it was of a more awkward construction than either. The boiler was of cast-iron.
Robert Stephenson lent him £50 to enable him to reach England; and though he was afterwards heard of as an inventor there, he had no further part in the ultimate triumph of the locomotive. But Trevithick’s misadventures on this occasion had not yet ended, for before he reached New York he was wrecked, and Robert Stephenson with him.
Writing to a Cornish friend shortly after its arrival in town, Sir Humphry said: “I shall soon hope to hear that the roads of England are the haunts of Captain Trevithick’s dragons—a characteristic name.” The machine was afterwards publicly exhibited in an enclosed piece of ground near Euston Square, where the London and North-Western Station now stands, and it dragged behind it a wheel-carriage full of passengers.
These wheels were entirely independent of the working parts of the engine, and therefore merely supported its weight upon the rails, the progress being effected by means of the cogged-wheel working into the cogged-rail. The engine had two cylinders, instead of one as in Trevithick’s engine.
It seems to have been felt that unless the road were entirely reconstructed so as to bear the heavy weight of the locomotive—so much greater than that of the tram-waggons, to carry which the original rails had been laid down—the regular employment of Trevithick’s high-pressure tram-engine was altogether impracticable; and as the owners of the works were not prepared to incur so serious a cost, it was determined to take the locomotive off the road, and employ it as an engine for other purposes.
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