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The sight of this humble railroad in 1813 led Sir Richard Phillips in his ‘Morning Walk to Kew’ to anticipate the great advantages which would be derived by the nation from the general adoption of Blenkinsop’s engine for the conveyance of mails and passengers at ten or even fifteen miles an hour. In the same year we find Mr. Thomas Gray, of Nottingham, was another speculator on the same subject.
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.
He had also the advantage, about the same time, of seeing one of Blenkinsop’s Leeds engines, which was placed on the tramway leading from the collieries of Kenton and Coxlodge, on the 2nd September, 1813. This locomotive drew sixteen chaldron waggons containing an aggregate weight of seventy tons, at the rate of about three miles an hour.
Though he was no mechanic nor inventor, he had an enthusiastic belief in the powers of the railroad system. Being a native of Leeds, he had, when a boy, seen Blenkinsop’s locomotive at work on the Middleton cogged railroad, and from an early period he seems to have entertained almost as sanguine views on the subject as Sir Richard Phillips.
In this first locomotive constructed at Killingworth, Stephenson to some extent followed the plan of Blenkinsop’s engine. The boiler was cylindrical, of wrought iron, 8 feet in length and 34 inches in diameter, with an internal flue-tube 20 inches wide passing through it.
The new iron road proved so much smoother than the old wooden one, that a single horse, instead of drawing one, was now enabled to draw two, or even three, laden waggons. Encouraged by the success of Mr. Blenkinsop’s experiment at Leeds, Mr. Blackett determined to follow his example; and in 1812 he ordered a second engine, to work with a toothed driving-wheel upon a rack-rail.
The connecting-rods gave the motion to two pinions by cranks at right angles to each other; these pinions communicating the motion to the wheel which worked into the cogged-rail. Mr. Blenkinsop’s engines began running on the railway from the Middleton Collieries to Leeds, about 3½ miles, on the 12th of August, 1812.
The power of the two cylinders was combined by means of spurwheels, which communicated the motive power to the wheels supporting the engine on the rail, instead of, as in Blenkinsop’s engine, to cogwheels which acted on the cogged rail independent of the four supporting wheels. The engine thus worked upon what is termed the second motion.
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