RAILWAYS. No invention, aside from that of the steam engine itself, has had so revolutionary an influence on modern social and industrial conditions. Without railway transportation modern trade and commerce would be an im possibility.
Rails, as a means to facilitating the drawing of heavy loads, preceded the invention of the locomotive by more than a century. In 1649 wooden rails were laid by the collieries in the north of England for cars drawn by horses, for the transportation of coal from the pits to the near-by towns, and even to the waterfronts, where it could be loaded on barges and vessels. Along these flanged beams cars were drawn by horses with such comparative ease that instead of a load of 1,700 lbs. by a common road, a load of two tons could now be drawn by a single horse.
In about 1740 cast iron rails, fastened on wooden sleepers, were instituted. Ten years later iron rails were in gen eral use among the coal mines in the north of England and Scotland, and then it became a practice to link the cars to gether into trains. The next improve ment was putting the flanges on the wheels instead of on the rails.
The invention of the steam engine drew the attention of inventors to the possibility of devising an engine which should serve as a motive power for the cars instead of the horses. The first man to complete a practicable locomotive was Richard Trevethick. In 1802 he took out a patent for a wheeled engine which should run on rails by its own power, and exhibited a model of it in London. Two years later, in 1804, he produced a steam carriage which hauled ten tons of coal along the rails at a speed of five miles an hour. It was the first locomotive, and although a success as far as it went, a considerable period passed before further experiments were made. This was due to the fixed belief among engineers that a smooth wheel could not draw a heavy load along a smooth track up an incline. It was not till 1812 that a small locomotive was put to practical use in drawing carloads of coal from the neighboring collieries to the city of Leeds, in the north of England. Treve
thick, meanwhile, had lost interest in his invention.
In 1814 George Stephenson, an engi neer, built a locomotive and put it in operation near Killingsworth, and demon strated that it could draw heavy loads up an incline; his engine pulled 35 tons up an incline at a speed of four miles an hour. Yet it was not till 1825 that the first demonstration of a railway train in motion was given, on the Stockton-Dar lington railway. On this occasion the locomotive, the product of Stephenson's genius, drew 22 cars filled with passen gers, and 12 cars filled with coal, alto gether 90 tons, at a speed of from five to twelve miles an hour.
In the following year a railway was begun between Manchester and Liver pool, a distance of thirty miles, and Oct. 1, 1829, was fixed as the day on which a grand competition was to be held be tween inventors of locomotives. Four engines appeared, two of which had been built by Stephenson and John Ericsson, the later subsequently becoming famous in this country as the inventor of the "Monitor." For fourteen days the trials continued, Stephenson's engine being finally accepted as the superior one.
The Manchester-Liverpool railway was opened for passenger and freight traffic in 1830, and immediately proved a big success. The great railway sys tem was thereby inaugurated.
Railway promotion now assumed the proportions of a boom and spread to other countries, in spite of the opposi tion of the sceptical and the owners of canals. It is said that the King of France at this time sent one of his most capable ministers to investigate the new institution. On his return this function ary reported: "Sire," he said, "railways may prove beneficial in England, but they are not adapted to conditions in France." Thus have many beneficial inventions been handicapped by the bigoted.