Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The World's Rail Way: Historical, Descriptive, Illustrative
Off its wheels and make it a stationary engine. The idea is here, if not its full 18realization, and it is sufficient to encourage and lead to other experiments. The locomotive is conceived. As if in common, the rail way the same year advances, Benjamin Outram introducing stone props, or sleepers, instead of timber, for supporting the ends or joinings of the rails, thus insuring greater strength to support heavy loads. Trevithick, it now being late in the year 1800, determines to construct a steam engine of full size and of such capacity as will enable ac tual operation upon the roads in his vicinity. His tools and facilities are those of'a country blacksmith, and therefore progress is exceedingly slow, and it is not until Christmas time of 1801 that Captain Dick's Puffer, as the people call it, is on the road puffing and blowing after a manner simply as tonishing to the natives. Getting some of them aboard, the first transportation of passengers by the force of steam in the world is recorded, and the Puffer moves off at the rate of four or five miles an hour. The preliminary trial is more than satisfactory. Particularly in the ability demonstrated to ascend grades. The great difficulty is in keeping up the steam pressure, which it is attempted to accomplish by the use of cylindrical or horizontal bellows worked by the engine itself. The engine is upon four'wheels, the boiler of the hori zontal return flue type, known as the Lancashire, and of Oliver Evans' devising, that is to say, the same as his built and used in America. There is one vertical cylinder in this Trevithick of 1801, and it is located in the top of the boiler. The piston rod extends through the upper cylinder head to the cross-head, and the connecting rod down to the back wheels. The two front wheels are arranged in a truck, and the exhaust is into the stack. There is a pump with feed water heater, and a blower on top of the boiler with a pipe to an ash pit. The turning of the exhaust steam into the stack A is to get rid of the noise, and thus not only to a certain extent calm the apprehension Of the people, but at the same time enable the driving of horses within something like a reasonable distance of the machine when it is under full head of steam. Trouble being found with adhesion, Trevithick proposes to obviate it by, to quote his own words.
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