The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer

Front Cover
J. Murray, 1857 - Collection locomotives - 517 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 224 - What can be more palpably absurd or ridiculous than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stage coaches ! "Wo should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's Ricochet Rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate.
Page 234 - Suppose, now, one of these engines to be going along a railroad at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine ; would not that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance ? "
Page 57 - The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight and parallel ; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails ; whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal merchants.
Page 228 - It was not an easy task for me to keep the engine down to ten miles an hour ; but it must be done, and I did my best. I had to place myself in that most unpleasant of all positions — the witness-box of a parliamentary committee.
Page 466 - I suppose it is one of your big engines.' ' But what drives the engine ? ' ' Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver.
Page 218 - Travelling by rail would be highly dangerous, and country inns would be ruined, boilers would burst and blow passengers to atoms. But there was always this consolation to wind up with — that the weight of the locomotive would completely prevent its moving, and that railways, even if made, could never be worked by steam-power.
Page 276 - The company to be at liberty to test the boiler, etc., by a pressure of one hundred and fifty pounds to the square inch. 6. A mercurial gauge must be affixed to the machine, showing the steam pressure above forty-five pounds per square inch. 7. The engine must be delivered, complete and ready for trial, at the Liverpool end of the railway, not later than the 1st of October, 1829. 8. The price of the engine must not exceed £550.
Page 166 - It was set forth in the preamble that these different lines " will be of great public utility, by facilitating the conveyance of coal, iron, lime, corn, and other commodities, from the interior of the county of Durham...
Page 72 - Trevethick's engine. The invention of the double cylinder was due to Matthew Murray, of Leeds, one of the best mechanical engineers of his time, Mr. Blenkinsop, who was not himself a mechanic, having consulted him as to all the practical arrangements of his locomotive. 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 toothed-rail.
Page 503 - It is certainly some consolation to those who are to be whirled at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour, by means of a high pressure engine, to be told that they are in no danger of being seasick while on shore ; that they are not to be scalded to death nor drowned by the bursting of the boiler; and that they need not mind being shot by the scattered fragments, or dashed...

Bibliographic information