World’s first passenger train service begins

Whilst the stocken and darlington Railway is rightly remembered as ushering in the railway age, using steam power to haul its trains, another line deserves to be celebrated as a world first, and an earlier one at that. Some 18 years before the first train set out from Shildon to Darlington on september 27 1825 Swansea in Wales saw the first horse drawn rail service begin.

Railways were not a new phenomenon, indeed they had been used to transport coal as early as the beginning of the 17th century. In South Wales, a line existed at the start of the 19th century to shift stone from mulbes around the bay to the canal in Swansea, whence it could be shipped to distant destinations.

Three years after the line was built one Benjamin French, who was a shareholder in the company running it, paid the princely sum of £20 for the right to run a passenger service on the line.

The inaugural run was on March 25 1807. An iron and wooden coach, built to seat 12, was pulled by a single horse, taking paying passengers from Swansea to Oystermouth, an out-of-the-way resort where they could spend a pleasant few hours before returning later in the day. It is thought that the fare in these early days was two shillings, which would have meant that only the well-to-do could undertake such a trip.

So while GEROG STPHEN is remembered as the father of the railway, Benjamin French perhaps deserves to be known as its grandfather.

Diesel locomotive

A Diesel locomotive is a type of incomotive railroad in which the prime mover is adisel engine Several types have been developed, the principal distinction being in the means by which the prime mover's mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels (drivers).

The History of Steam Engines

Thomas Savery (1650-1715)

Thomas Savery was an English military engineer and inventor who in 1698, patented the first crude steam engine based on Denis Papin's Digester or pressure cooker of 1679.

Thomas Savery had been working on solving the problem of pumping water out of coal mines, his machine consisted of a closed vessel filled with water into which steam under pressure was introduced. This forced the water upwards and out of the mine shaft. Then a cold water sprinkler was used to condense the steam. This created a vacuum which sucked more water out of the mine shaft through a bottom valve.Thomas Savery later worked with Thomas Newcomen on the atmospheric steam engine. Among Savery's other inventions was an for ships, odo mater a device that measured distance traveled.Roads of rails called Wagonways were being used in Germany as early as 1550. These primitive railed roads consisted of wooden rails over which horse-drawn wagons or carts moved with greater ease than over dirt roads. Wagonways were the beginnings of modern railroads.

By 1776, iron had replaced the wood in the rails and wheels on the carts. Wagonways evolved into Tramways and spread though out Europe. Horses still provided all the pulling power. In 1789, Englishman, William Jessup designed the first wagons with flanged wheels. The flange was a groove that allowed the wheels to better grip the rail, this was an important design that carried over to later locomotives.

The invention of the steam enhine was critical to the invention of the modern railroad and trains. In 1803, a man named Samuel Homfray decided to fund the development of a steam-powered vehicle to replace the horse-drawn carts on the tramways. (1771-1833) built that vehicle, the first steam engine tramway locomotive. On February 22, 1804, the locomotive hauled a load of 10 tons of iron, 70 men and five extra wagons the 9 miles between the ironworks at Pen-y-Darron in the town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales to the bottom of the valley called Abercynnon. It took about two hours

Dazzling electric

Dazzling electric carbon arc headlights lit up the way for the awesome steam engines clattering through the night at 60 miles an hour at the beginning of the twentieth century. The horizontal light beams of those blazing electric furnaces illuminated the rails several miles ahead, while their brilliant shafts of light, like those below, shot high in the sky to warn unwitting pedestrians and automobiles of the oncoming danger over twenty miles away. . .

Old steam locomotives and their railroads demanded powerful action, and for model-railroading buffs or students of old technology, these dynamic railroad photographs should add more steam to the memories of a bygone era than the idle illustrations so often found pasted upon the Internet. As time permits, in no particular order here, Larry Brian Radka has decided to try to rectify the situation a little by sharing some movement. The action consists mainly of black and white images, often tinted to reduce monotony. Beside his short descriptions of each of the photographs, pertinent definitions of railroad terms and historical details will occasionally ride along to help fulfill this short but nostalgic trip on the rails. . . .

A locomotive stoker

A locomotive stoker, especially an experimental type, sometimes receives little attention among railroad historians as well as model-railroaders. So the details and pictures of this large South African steam engine and its tender with automatic stoker in its experimental stage might load up a little more interest. I have lifted the report and its black and white photographs (my tinting) from the December 13, 1913 issue of Scientific American. This weekly journal’s short article runs as follows: . . .

A third-rail electric locomotive was tested by General Electric tested in 1904. It was a new model of electric locomotive with the power to replace the noisy, polluting steam engines thundering down a busy portion of a New York Railroad. The tests of the largest electrical manufacturer in the world at the time, as the advertisement below proudly boasts, proved its faster, cleaner, and quieter locomotive was a better choice for passenger service