Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/30

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8
Engines and Men

it was taken from its pedestal to work on the Darlington section of the North Eastern Railway at the Stockton and Darlington Jubilee in 1875. The following year it went to the Philadelphia Exhibition, and van for the Stephenson Centenary in 1881. Her show career also included the Liverpool Exhibition of 1886, and the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Stephenson erected three similar engines for the Stockton & Darlington Railway; their "No. 5" was supplied by Messrs. Gilkes, Wilson & Co., of Leeds, and "No. 6" was Stephenson's engine, "Experiment," having six coupled wheels and outside inclined cylinders. Messrs. Stephenson & Co, built in 1827 an engine named "Twin Sisters," employed as a ballast engine on the construction of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. It had twin hailers and two tall chimneys, with two blast pipes. In 1828, Stephenson & Co, built a four-wheeled coupled engine, named "The Lancashire Witch," for the Bolton & Leigh Railway, with cylinders outside and inclined. This engine hauled 58 tons up a gradient of 1 in 432 at nearly nine miles an hour, and worked traffic for several years. To Messrs. Foster, Rastrick & Co., of Stourbridge, belongs the honour of building the first locomotive ever tried on rails in America. This engine, "Stourbridge Lion," was one of two built in 1829, and when it was tried on a short section of local line in America, in 1830, it caused a great sensation, people gathering from considerable distances to see the trial of this strange British steam engine.

We have seen so far the first locomotives built and proved worthy, we have seen the opening of the world's first public railway, and the emergence of George Stephenson to fame as a pioneer of locomotive construction. We now come to a conspicuous success of his career, the romantic way in which he scored at the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which has been truly designated as the Grand British Experimental Railway. The structure and opening of this line was mooted in 1829, and the question how to work the projected line naturally came before the directors—should they rely upon horses, fixed engines and ropes, or the new locomotives. They preferred the last named, and one