Stephenson’s
Patent Locomotive 1836
The
Steam Locomotive was invented in Great Britain in 1804
by Richard Trevithick. The first practical steam locomotive,
the famous Rocket, was built in 1825 by the inventor
Robert Stephenson, who’s innovations were used on almost
all locomotives through the early 20th century.
The Stephenson’s Patent Locomotive, a 2-2-2 type, was
built in 1836 for the London and Birmingham Railway
as a “contractor’s locomotive”, used to haul earth excavated
when building the railway. She produced 77 horsepower,
and was capable of hauling up to 220 tons at 14 miles
per hour on level track, and forty tons at 35 miles
per hour. Stephenson incorporated many important inventions
in this design, including his “Gab valve Gear, illustrated
below, hence the name Patent.
My SolidWorks™ CAD model, including every individual
component, was reverse-engineered from exceptional line
drawings created in 1838 and published, at the request
of Queen Victoria, as a treatise defining the State
of the Art of locomotive engineering at the time.
It was originally published by Thomas Tredgold as The
Steam Engine: It’s Invention and Progressive Improvement,
an original of which is in the Archive Collection of
Stanford University (USA), and reprinted by Glenwood
Publishers in 1967.