1804
Richard Trevithick successfully demonstrates a steam railway engine for the first time in the world, at Penydarren, Wales, 22 February.
1813
William Hedley builds Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly as colliery locomotives.
The Puffing Billy The Locomotion
1829 1815 1825 |
1830
(Above) Northumbrian, which was built by Stephenson in 1830, less than a year after Rocket, embodied many improvements, including a smoke-box, horizontal cylinders and a boiler incorporating water-space around the firebox – all fundamentals of locomotive design. It also had what was probably the first true tender.
The Planet 2-2-0 locomotive type is introduced, among the first to have inside cylinders beneath the smokebox. 1833 1840 |
Replica of the Planet
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1843
The Grand Junction locomotive works are transferred from Edge Hill, Liverpool, to Crewe. Swindon Works (GWR) opens on 2 January. The LSWR begins to build its own engines at Nine Elms.
(Above) Thomas Russell Crampton (1816-88) patented his rear-drive locomotive, Liverpool, in 1843.
1845 1846 |
Great Western
1847
(Above) The GWR 4-2-2 Iron Duke, built in 1847, represents Daniel Gooch’s standard express type. This would remain the basic traction of GW mainline services until the abolition of the broad gauge in 1892.
(Above) Named after Jenny Lind, a Swedish singer popular with mid-nineteenth century British audiences, and designed in 1847 by David Joy, this neat 4-2-2 was built as a works venture by the Leeds Engine Foundry and sold to the London Brighton & South Coast Railway. Many were also exported.
1850
The brick-arch firebox, to facilitate coal burning, is developed on the Midland Railway between 1850 and 1859.
I like the imaginative early names.
Agree. You wouldn’t find one called after a Swedish singer to day 😉