PREVIEW： Epochs #242 ｜ The History of Steam Power with Alex Masters： Part III
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Summary
In this episode, we take a look at one of the most famous steam engines in British history, the famous yellow one, the first tank engine, the First Tank Engine. It s built by a chap who went on to go on to invent the screw propeller and build the first fire engines for the British navy in World War II.
Transcript
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what you get then which is 1829 is the famous rainhill trials and this is
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george again wants to run this railway entirely with steam engines so it's dotting darlington
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public railway some people use steam engines some people use horses it's all a bit of a mess
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he wants this to be absolutely 100 steam train hauled or locomotive hauled so they set up a
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competition on a completed piece of the track at rainhill and you know set up a bunch of
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conditions it's got a haul five times its own weight and got to go faster than 10 miles an
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hour and all the rest of it for a 500 pound prize which is not an inconsiderable amount of money
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um five people get there i think they have quite a lot of interest um but only five actually turn up
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one of them is called cyclopede which is actually a treadmill with a horse on it
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uh which immediately gets disqualified because it's not steam engine
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uh one of them is called perseverance and is built by a chap from edinburgh uh it never works he spends
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the entire weekend in the workshops trying to get it to go and it just doesn't um one of them is called
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song son paris and is built by timothy hackworth the chief mechanical engineer of the stockton darlington
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one of them is called novelty and is built by a swede called john erickson who is currently uh down in
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london building fire engines is that the erickson the john erickson right okay yeah the guy who goes on to
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invent the screw propeller and build the uss monitor for the us navy in world war in the in the civil war
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he did loads of stuff no very famous man yeah really fascinating chap i think he dabbles with
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submarines at one point as well yeah i think so yeah um so yeah this is 1829 so he's quite young
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and fresh-faced i was gonna say he must have been young then it's just a just a nipper i think it was
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yeah it must have been in his mid-20s interesting um and then there is from robert stevenson the rocket
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which is the famous yellow one uh george's son george's son estranged still
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no that's they've got a professional working relationship now um interestingly rocket is
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delivered to rain hill because obviously it's got to get over across the country it's delivered by
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pickford's right which is the same pickford's as in the removals company right um so it turns up in
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liverpool and they line them up and they have the uh they have the competition novelty is a fascinating
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little engine it's called it's sometimes called the first tank engine and it's a flat um operating
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space you know platform on top of four wheels there's a water tank underneath it and then it's
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got a t-shaped boiler so you've got this big sort of coffee pot thing that comes out of the floor
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in front of you there's a hatch on top that you can put coal in and then there's a there's a thin
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barrel that runs under the under the floor and then there's a sort of little um exhaust pipe at the end
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which goes up the back there's in two cylinders mounted um towards the back and a sort of bucket
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shaped thing and the two cylinders act on or act on a bell crank which then drives the wheels but the
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bell crank also has bellows in it and the bellows provide draft into the bottom of the fire to heat
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it up it's very much like a blacksmith's stove okay um that's that's the operating principle it's it
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looks like one of his fire engines because actually the fire engines were essentially that but it instead
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of driving the wheels it was just horse drawn and then the two cylinders operate pumps which would
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be where your water tank is um it's very pretty it's got a flagpole um it's the press's favorite
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it's very very fast but you know 18 19 miles an hour um but the bellows blow on day two and it can't
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finish so you've got these two bellies doing this all the time and the wet the leather wears out
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somperet is built by timothy hackworth it's a derivative of engines that he's been building for
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a long time where it's it's like the best of the first generation so he's got a return flu
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boiler two cylinders on the side pointing directly down at the wheels
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with direct coupling but the driver stands on a platform at one end up quite high with the
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cylinders and the fireman stands on the platform in the tender at the other end
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right so and it goes backwards it pushes its tender along so the fireman faces backwards and
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the driver looks over the whole lot as it as it goes along it's very powerful
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it's quite hard on its fire so its economy goes down um but the big thing is that one of its
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the water pump packs in and one of its cylinders bursts right the hackworth family
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claim sabotage because the cylinders were actually bored by the stevensons so cylinders were made at
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robert stevensson works do you think there's anything in that just personal opinion on that
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i don't think there is because apparently because we've still got like invoices for it
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they cast about six cylinders and then hackworth himself picked out the ones that were going to go
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on the engine right okay um because they had a they had a weird way of um doing them where you get
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the approximate shape by what they call a floating core so the cylinders are made of cast iron
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but you don't cast a block you cast a tube to roughly the right dimensions and then all you
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have to do is bore out the excess you know so you don't end up having to drill a hole
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but when it's it's a floating core so you you make up the core box with a hole in it and then the core
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that's going to be where the cylinder bore is just sits in the correct place the problem with
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that is is as you pour the molten iron in the core has a nasty tendency of like moving because you're
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pouring it in at one end and the gas is trying to get out the other so and it sort of you know
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knocks one way or the other so with a floating core it's almost impossible to get it perfectly
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parallel right okay and then when you bore it out you bore it out yeah you want it in the middle
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but obviously if you're if the core's off center and you're trying to bore you might end up with
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one side has gone really deep and then the other side is still rough so you bore as centrally as you
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can it's not precision engineering really not yet as we know it as we would understand it no but it's
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it's as good as they can do okay rocket is painted yellow um which apparently means it attracts wasps
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um even to this day uh the cylinders should have painted it red should have things always go faster
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when they're red we know this they move the cylinders down to a 45 degree angle on the back
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of the boiler but the two big inventions on rocket are the fire box has now come out of the boiler and
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is an is a separate box and that's got a water jacket around it right so it's got over the top
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of the box is a is a sort of two inch water wall and obviously you've got the fire in there absolutely
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white hot so that sucks a lot of the heat out so you get a really really efficient strong uh
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way of raising steam the other thing it's got is a multi-tubular boiler so through the barrel section
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instead of having one big tube or one big youtube it's now got 25 i think it is two inch diameter
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copper tubes right the heat transfer is much better and the rate at which you can transfer the heat is much
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higher so you can make much more steam much quicker you've also got as a slight a slight advantage is
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that you've actually got less water in the boiler because more of it's made up of tubes which then
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means the boiler responds faster to whatever you do with it because there's less water to get boiling
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in the first place rocket is the only engine that is able to complete the weekend's trials right
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and apparently when the other two are broken down stevenson just sends it up the track
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like engine just to give the crowd something to look at um and it's at that point she gets up
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north of 30 miles an hour you know which is which means that she's the first machine we've ever made
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that can go faster than a horse yeah with people on it certainly much faster than a man could run
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yeah um again so one of those moments in time really yeah where you feel like it's hard not to
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look back at that that's a reason why it's famous right yeah because it's hard not to look back at
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that and think like they would have known in real time at the time wow this is something this is like a
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world changing game changing yeah the possibilities this is actually history happening yeah yeah looking
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into the future we can obviously make this even better even more efficient even but like the world's
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the the sky's the limit with this thing yeah um like the age of the horse yeah but it's done we've
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been in the age of the horse since the dawn of civilization yes this is something new yes right here
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right now we finally cracked and it's it's it's even more like important we finally cracked
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mass land transport yeah because until then if a horse couldn't carry it you had to move it by water
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which means civilizations happen either on rivers or around bodies of water so the roman world
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is entirely dependent on the mediterranean sea that's why i have the troubles every if they go too far
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away from the meds they've got because it's or rivers or rivers yeah you know the nile the indus
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valley all these ancient civilizations right up until that time you know you could even say the
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anglo-saxons are a sort of north sea civilization it's a civilization centered on the north sea
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the first time ever you can actually have a land based civilization so the center of your world
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moves inland for the first time ever and nothing goes faster than a horse the speed of information
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is as fast as horses yeah not anymore no not anymore not anymore and you can move a lot of stuff
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it's an incredible what's a time to have been alive yeah um the amazing thing though is that rocket
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is already obsolete by the time the liverpool and manchester opened 18 months later there's
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another quick thing to say just to point out just to stress is the idea that you instead of having
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um you said there's 25 different steam pipes yeah going through the thing
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again i'll just come back to the idea of an engineer with imagination it's like well why don't
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we just do wait we can just do this can't we that would be way better wouldn't it oh yes it is
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obviously it is yeah and then and once again the sky's the limit yeah you can just keep making it
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better keep tweaking it keep and it's and it's amazing how there's a lot of things and it's not just in
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it's not just in engineering you can see in politics and things like this is that often the
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the initial tech or the initial idea goes as far as it can because it's just too complicated
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and actually what then pushes it forward is a simplification building a building a pressure
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tube that is that wide is actually quite difficult because you've got to build it out of plate and
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rivet it and all the rest of it a tube that's this big can just be drawn so making tube this big is
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actually much easier than making a tube that big and and yeah that's it the sky's the limit you've
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you've you've changed the way you look at the problem which then means that the limitation in
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the technology is gone and you can go and find the next one yeah um the next one the next one they
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build is called northumbrian it's basically rocket the cylinders have gone flat the firebox is now
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integral to the barrel it's got a proper smoke box they start playing with um with the reversing gear
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as well to try and make them easier to drive that hauls the first train duke of uh the duke of
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wellington's on that train uh in 1830 it's also where prime minister oh yeah it's where um huskisson
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the mp for liverpool is unfortunately run over and killed is he the first is he the first
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he's the he's the first celebrity death uh on a on a railway um yeah plenty of navvies and
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you know nameless geordie engine men have been killed before them but uh but they've gone away
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from that they then they then take the essentially in six months later they've taken northumbrian's
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boiler put the cylinders inside because mechanical moving things are unsightly um and then have an
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engine called planet and there's a replica of that at the manchester that's a very famous one
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that's a very famous one why is that so famous do you think is there particular innovations on that
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that were groundbreaking why is that it's it's the first steam and steam locomotive that looks like
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a modern steam locomotive all right okay um before then they look there's a beam engines or wheels and
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they look sort of gangly and a bit odd and a bit experimental planet is designed to run a railway
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every day right she's not an experiment she is a commercial uh thing she there's also the planet is the
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first of that type is like the first engine to run in russia it's the first one to run there's one of
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them goes to the states um so they're mass produced not all that mass but they're mass produced mass
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produced um a year later they then actually rivet a bonus a back axle onto it so now we've got three
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axles instead of two um because what's that make a difference or you've got on planet the um firebox
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hangs over the back axle or is after the back axle at speed she starts to wobble okay she's not she's
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not happy at high speeds and this is 35 miles an hour and also if you've got that overhang it limits
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the size of your firebox okay so if you want to make if you want to make it more power you've got
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to make the box deeper and that just means it steps too far back so but if you have a lengthen firebox
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and then put a back axle on it to support that load okay um so now we've got a three axle machine
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one in the middle's driven one on the front one on the back are there for stability you've now got an
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engine which which they call the patent t um and is the first engine to run in germany first in
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belgium in holland in italy in india this is this is the one that takes steam engine global right
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um and that's like 1832 1831 um it's really and is the first on many many um railways a 222
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um express engine like that they've also got the benefit of if you couple up two of the axles you've
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got a general purpose engine and if you couple up all three you've got a goods engine
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um so even right at the very start all traffic was just the same and it's within a year or so
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they start going actually the passengers want to get there quickly and the goods are heavy you know
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it's heavier than people so actually you want grunt to start moving the freight about and you want speed
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to start moving the passengers about um so that differentiation starts to move off so you actually
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want to design slightly different engines for different things actually get start getting
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specialized designs right um the liverpool and manchester makes an enormous amount of money
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i think that the average dividend is something like nine percent on the share price um and of course you
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don't have to pay any dividend taxes or anything like that and a 100 pound share by the time it
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gets absorbed into the um london northwestern railway zone is some 147 pounds so you've you've you
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know made 50 percent back and it's been paying you nine percent a year um pretty good investment not
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bad at all not bad at all the liverpool and manchester is also fascinating because it's it's the one where
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they actually work out how to do being a railway um so they they have to work out signaling and um
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proper jobs and like how do you do a intercity station and how do you do a goods yard and how do you work
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out pricing and you know have proper locomotive facilities because even on stockton darlington it's a
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freight line so you send an engine out every now and again and speed isn't an op isn't a priority
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um timetables aren't a priority but when you're when you start dealing with passengers you're like no
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the train leaves at 11 um and it will get there at this time um so are there also all sorts of issues to do
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with uh not just gradients but like um going around curves yeah right they have to learn that's not
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straightforward right that's that's actually as a whole and you have to understand various things in
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order to it's one make sure you don't derail yeah it's one of the things even today um you get a lot
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of realigning in britain's railways because they were built immediately after that in the 1840s 1850s
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during the railway mania but they were built for engines that weighed 20 tons and were doing 15 miles
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an hour now you're trying to run so you know they sneak like this you know and they're trying to not
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use gradients wherever possible um in fact there were a lot of them were built like canals
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where they you get you go as far as as you possibly can on the level and then you like a big steep bit
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and then another level bit um which is a which is a way of building railways unique to britain
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because a lot of the manpower the navis have been building canals that was that was what they knew
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what to do and that was the the civil engineering brain at that time that was what they knew what to
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do so they they could find the contours in the land and they could find where they needed
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to put an embankment in or something like that but the french actually and a lot of the european
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railways are built by the government and so what they do is there's an office in paris and they
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just draw a straight line and then so you end up with railways that do this where it's it undulates
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as the crow flies over hills whereas what the brits will do is is go around the hill to try and
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not put the gradients in we hope you enjoyed that video and if you did please head over to