THE EARLY DAYS OF
CANALS, RAILWAYS AND LOCOMOTIVES
An address delivered on the occasion of
The Centenary Celebration of The Delaware and Hudson Company
at the Hotel Casey, Scranton, Pa.,
on April 24, 1923
HE
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By H. W. Dickinson,
of The Science Museum, South Kensington, London,
Hon. Sec., The Newcomen Society,
for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology
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■ Tl'Sí
THE EARLY DAYS OF CANALS, RAILWAYS AND
LOCOMOTIVES.
By
H. W. DICKINSON
When I was invited to address you on this auspicious
occasion, I looked back, as no doubt my hearers are doing, upon
the hundred years of progress made by the Delaware and Hudson
Company and I felt that besides talking about the giant uses
of steam power I could hardly do less than devote a few minutes
to speaking about the early development of internal transporta¬
tion, hence my excuse for a second address. I am not going to
say anything, however, about roads or highways, much as I
should like to do so, as that would take us to too remote a period.
Seeing that the Company commenced originally as a Canal
Company, I propose to give a few outstanding facts about the
growth of the canal system, and then as the Company constructed
their first railroad line in 1828 a few words as to rail transport will
be pertinent. This also happens to be the chronological order.
When we talk about canals, we do not usually mean either
drainage or irrigation canals, because their primary function is
not that of transportation. We mean rather the navigation
canal—a still water level channel along which a vessel can be
towed by animal or other power. Canals of the first two named
types were constructed in remote antiquity in Egypt, Assyria,
India and China, and in historical times by the Romans. To
these the navigation canal undoubtedly owes its origin. Ob¬
viously, however, its scope was limited till the invention of
means for overcoming differences in level. Such means are the
pound lock, the incline and the vertical lift. The lock is by far
the most important and is supposed to have originated either
in the Netherlands in the 14th century or in Italy in the 15th
4
century. England was not very far behind, considering the
undeveloped state of the country, for the first canal was con¬
structed in 1566 by John Trew, from Exeter to Topsham, a
distance of 3 miles in the county of Devon. Short as it was,
it was a true canal for it comprised one lock. During the suc¬
ceeding two centuries many plans for the improvement of inland
communication were carried out but they were limited to the
canalization of existing waterways and do not, therefore, fall
within our definition. On the continent, however, works of
considerable magnitude were executed as witness that pioneer
of modern European canals—the Grand Canal of Languedoc—•
connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean
at the isthmus between France and Spain near the Pyrenees.
This is no less than 158 miles long and has 119 locks; it was
planned and carried out between 1666 and 1681 by Pierre Paul
Riquet in the face of opposition and difficulties, not the least of
which was lack of funds.
The first really important lock-canal in Great Britain was
due to the energy and private resources of the Duke of Bridge-
water, whose canal from Worsley to Manchester was constructed
by James Brindley in 1759. In its course the river Irwell had
to be crossed at Barton. Instead of two flights of locks, Brindley
adopted the then novel and bold expedient of an aqueduct.
The embankments over adjoining low ground were almost
as great a feat as they had to be rendered impervious to leakage;
this Brindley accomplished by clay puddling. It is of interest
to note that when the Manchester Ship Canal was made, the
Barton aqueduct was replaced by a swing aqueduct—the first
of its kind.
The Duke followed up his initial success by a canal from
Runcorn to Longford Bridge, thus establishing water carriage
between Liverpool and Manchester. These navigations, coming
5
as they did, just when the industrial revolution was taking place,
were extraordinarily remunerative. Brindley soon constructed
other canals and the increase in material wealth that they
promoted was realized by the public, speculation became rife
and a canal mania supervened in 1791-4. During this period
upwards of eighty Acts of Parliament were passed involving
the expenditure of more than twenty million dollars.
I mentioned the incline as another means of surmounting
differences in level; it is used especially where such differences
are great or water is scarce. The incline comprises either a
special cradle or a caisson for the canal boat, the whole being
drawn up on rails by a cable. The incline in a primitive form
is said to have been used in China in very early times. The
first proposal for an incline that I have been able to find was
one made by John Dixon in 1782 in connection with a canal
scheme that was obviated by the construction of the Stockton
and Darlington Railway. The first to actually use the counter¬
balanced cradle was Richard Reynolds on the Ketley Canal
in Shropshire in 1788. There is an example of this kind of incline
on the Morris Canal, New Jersey, 1825-31, where there are twenty-
three with a rise of from forty four to one hundred feet each,
the gradient being about one in ten.
Robert Fulton took out an English patent in 1794 for the
first caisson inclined plane and lift.* I mention him because for
five or six years from 1793 he employed himself in furthering
canal schemes, not only in England and Erance, but also in the
United States. In fact, he was the first to suggest the con¬
struction of a canal to Lake Erie. The caisson seems to have
been first adopted on the Chard Canal in Somerset. A good
example, built in 1876 at Georgetown, connects the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal with the Potomac.
*See Dickinson—"Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist," 1913, p. 28.
6
Vertical canal lifts were later than the other devices men¬
tioned since they involve, generally, greater outlay. A simple
one with a lift of twelve feet worked by manual power was
constructed in 1809 on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.
Perhaps the best known example is on the Canal du Centre
at La Louviere, Belgium, where there are four lifts totalling
two hundred and twenty feet, the gross weight raised being
1,100 tons.
In Great Britain the coming of the railway arrested canal
construction completely, and in the United States checked it
considerably, hence we may leave the subject and turn our
attention to railways.
Now railways, little as perhaps most of my hearers may
imagine it, long preceded locomotives. We are on safe ground
if we say that railways were first made to ease the draught of
wheeled vehicles at a period when the art of roadmaking had
been almost entirely lost in England. I refer to the end of the
16th, and the beginning of the I7th centuries. The use of rail¬
ways in connection with coal-mining in the county of Nottingham
is clearly described in a letter dated May 1st, 1610, preserved in
the MSS. of Wollaton Hall:
"I beseeche you take order with Sir Thomas that we maie
have libertie to bring coales down the rayles by wagen for our
caridges onely, and we will bring them down by raile ourselves,
for Strelley cartway is so fowle as few cariadges can pass."*
Bringing coals by rail has an extremely modern sound
—yet here we find that it was done three hundred years ago.
There is no hint that these "rayles" were anything new then,
and from how much earlier a period they date I am unable to say.
At the end of the 17th century, these railways were familiar
in the Newcastle district. In the life of Lord Keeper North,
*Hist. Manuscripts Commission Rep. 1911, pp. 169, 177.
7
1676, his biographer, speaking of this practice in the Newcastle
district, says: "the manner of their carriage is by laying rails
of timber from the colliery down to the river (f. e. Tyne) ex¬
actly straight and parallel, and bulky carts are made with four
rowlets fitting these rails whereby the carriage is so easy that
one horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals (i. e.
lOJ/2 to 13 tons) and is an immense benefit to coal merchants."
We cannot be sure whether there was but one flange on the
"rowlet" but I should imagine so, and if so, we do not know
whether it was inside or out. Nor do we know whether the
"rowlets" were of wood. Of one thing we can be quite sure,
however, and that is that the coal merchants got much "benefit"
from these railways.
They were used also in Shropshire, as we find from a lawsuit
that arose over the alleged nuisance caused by their employment
in 1698, from the collieries of Sir Humphrey Mackworth to
the waterside at Cardiff. In an affidavit taken in 1706, it
is remarked: "These waggon ways are very common, and fre¬
quently made use of about Newcastle, and also about Broseley,
Bentall, and other places in Shropshire, and are so far from being
nusances that they have ever been esteemed very useful to
preserve the roads which would otherwise be made very bad and
deep by the carriage of coal in common waggons and carts."
The rails appear to have been simply longitudinal rect¬
angular timbers held at intervals by ties. Apparently a harder
wood was used for the top surface, and later this was replaced
by wrought iron bars; indeed, just the kind of strap rail first
used on the Honesdale line of the Delaware and Hudson Canal
in 1829.
There was another kind of rail used in England, although
of later introduction, known as the plate or tram rail; they were
of cast iron, sometimes flat, but generally of L section, a yard
8
long each, spiked down into wooden pegs in holes in stone blocks
about 18 inches square. These rails probably do not date
much earlier than 1767, when they are first known to have been
used, because the cost of cast iron would have been prohibitive.
The advantage of these plates was that ordinary cart wheels
would run on them, but they had this great disadvantage that
stones and dirt lodged on them and caused obstruction. Never¬
theless, they were extensively used ; in fact the first public tram-
road in the world—the Surrey Iron Railway, 1803, from the
Thames at Wandsworth to Croydon—was thus equipped. I
say "public" advisedly, because anyone could drive a cart
along it on payment of tolls, although special waggons were
built expressly for the line as soon as it was opened.
The men who put down these plates were platelayers, a
word we still use in England for the permanent way men. Like
navvy—navigator, one who digs navigations or canals, it is a
reminder of old ways and old days.
It was on a tramroad of this latter description at Pen-y-
darren Ironworks in South Wales that Richard Trevithick made
his well-known experiment in 1804 of mounting one of his non-
condensing engines or "puffers" on wheels in order to win for
Samuel Homfray, proprietor of the works, a bet of 500 guineas.
As one would imagine, a rail of the plate type was not calculated
to withstand the weight of an engine, even of 5 tons only such
as this was, and consequently there were breakages. The im¬
mediate purpose—that of winning the bet—having been served,
nothing more was done for the time being. A notable fact is
that Trevithick turned the exhaust steam into the chimney and
remarked its effect in urging the fire.
An account of what Trevithick had done in South Wales
reached the ears of Christopher Blackett, the enterprising owner
of Wylam Colliery on the Tyne, who invited Trevithick to sup-
9
ply him with an engine to work on his wooden railway, but the
latter declined the business. A locomotive of Trevithick's de¬
sign was, however, built at Gateshead, but the result was so
dubious that it never left the works.
Trevithick made another attempt to bring the locomotive
to public notice, this time in London in 1808, the venue chosen
being close to what is now the site of the Euston terminus
of the London, Midland & Scottish Rly. Co. Practically
nothing is recorded or known definitely about the event or about
the engine* except that the latter was made by Hazeldine,
Rastrick & Co. of Bridgnorth. That it was made there is
readily accounted for by the fact that the firm was one of
those who had taken licences to make Trevithick's patent high
pressure engines or "puffers" ; indeed, as is proved by a document
that has been preserved, this was the firm that made the largest
number.
It is necessary to mention here an obsession of men's minds
which hindered progress for some time, and that was the idea
that a smooth wheel would not grip upon a smooth rail. Hence,
we find John Blenkinsop, of Middleton Colliery, Leeds, patent¬
ing a rack railway in 1811. We might never have heard of him,
perhaps, had he not been fortunate in securing the aid of Matthew
Murray, of Leeds, to build the locomotives to run on his line.
In these engines the important principle of two cylinders and
cranks at right angles was introduced. The locomotives re¬
mained in use successfully for about 30 years.
For the next forward step we must turn again to Northum-
bria—that nursery of railways and the locomotive. In 1813,
William Hedley, viewer (L e. manager) of Wylam Colliery, for
which the Gateshead locomotive has been intended, having
satisfied himself by experiment of the sufficiency of the grip of
*Trans. Newcomen Soc., I, 34.
10
smooth wheels, made an engine closely modelled on the one just
mentioned. It proved unsuccessful, so he tried again, this time
with success. It can be shortly described as like two engines
of the established beam type put upon wheels, whose axles were
geared together. Two of these "Puffing Billies" almost as
much altered as the Irishman's knife, are still preserved; one of
them is at the Science Museum, South Kensington, London.
It was doubtless the sight of these locomotives dragging
coal waggons past the door of his cottage, that spurred on George
Stephenson, the enginewright at Killingworth Colliery, to scheme
a locomotive which he patented in 1814, and obtained permission
to make at the Colliery. It had chain coupled axles. During
the next ten years, practically no improvements were made, as
constructive ability advanced but slowly.
Indeed, the track had not yet developed sufficiently to
stand mechanical traction. The invention of the narrow edge
rail is due to William Jessop, of Butterley Ironworks, Derby¬
shire. It was of cast iron of fish-bellied section, with feet by
which it could be spiked down to stone blocks; the latter, as we
would expect, frequently broke off, making the rail useless.
This defect was overcome by the introduction of detached feet
or "chairs," first used in 1797 about Newcastle. Perhaps the
most important step of all, was to make the rail continuous and
of the more expensive material, wrought iron. The rectangular
section was used in 1805, but the more economical T section was
introduced by J. Birkinshaw in 1820. As showing how the
human mind tends to run in a groove, much ingenuity was dis¬
played in rolling the web to a series of fish-bellied outlines to
resemble the cast iron rail, although incorrect in a continuous
girder. The parallel rail, the double-headed rail, 1838, and the
bull-headed rail, 1865, followed, with steady increases of weight
to meet increased axle loads. The flat-footed rail, so largely
11
used outside Great Britain is generally named after Charles B.
Vignoles, although it is practically certain that it was invented
in 1830 by Robert L. Stevens, engineer of the Camden & Amboy
Railroad. The bridge rail was used by Brunei on the Great
Western Railway broad gauge. The fish plate joint, now uni¬
versal, was introduced by W. B. Adams in 1847. Sleepers were,
as we have said, at first square blocks of stone, but they were
much too rigid and were liable to get out of gauge so that ties
or transverse sleepers supplanted them. We may say, generally,
that the track developed pari passu with the locomotive, some¬
what in the same way as the gun and the armour of the warship.
It was natural that, in districts where railways had been
developed, the demand for still better means of transport should
first arise. Thus, it is not surprising to find the first public
railway between two towns in the North of England—Stockton
and Darlington—projected in 1821, and opened for traffic in
1825. Nothing was said about traction in the Act authorising the
railway. George Stephenson, who was appointed the engineer,
laid it out for the use of the locomotive on the level, and of
the stationary engine on steep gradients. The supplementary
Act of 1823 gave powers for this, although the horse was by
no means excluded. Hence, the difficulty of working the traffic
may be imagined. By 1827, the superiority of the locomotive as
regards speed and cost of haulage may be said to have been well
established.
In another part of the country, i. e. between Liverpool and
Manchester there was a bad state of congestion of traffic, in
spite of the existence of a canal, a canalized river and a turnpike
road between the two towns. Much propaganda took place
and much ink was shed before a Bill was introduced into Parlia¬
ment in 1825 for the construction of a railway. This was
bitterly contested by landowners, canal proprietors and turn-
12
pike trusts.* The first engineering witness called was John
Urpeth Rastrick, who, by his coolness and apt answers under
cross examination, was a tower of strength in this and many a
subsequent parliamentary struggle over railroads. Stephenson,
Nicholas Wood and Cubitt were also examined ; all to no purpose,
for vested interests were too strong and the Bill was thrown out.
A new survey was made, and in 1826 better success attended the
promoters' efforts, for the Bill passed into law.
In 1828, the question of tractive power was still unsettled.
It was not as before, horses v. locomotives, but it was now sta¬
tionary engines and ropes v. locomotives. In November, 1828,
the Directors commissioned Rastrick and Walker to advise
them. These engineers visited practically all the existing rail¬
ways in England, and in separate reports! agreed, although in a
somewhat uncertain voice, in recommending stationary engines.
This was a blow to the two Stephensons, but with dogged
pertinacity they stuck to their opinion that the locomotive was
the most suitable means of haulage.
The Directors extricated themselves from the dilemma
in which they were placed by the conflicting advice of their
experts, by offering a prize of 2,500 dollars for a locomotive
which would best fulfil certain conditions. Amid widespread
interest, the trials took place at a level part of the line at Rain-
hill near Liverpool in October, 1829, John Kennedy, John U.
Rastrick and James Walker being the judges. As is universally
known, Stephenson and Booth's "Rocket" was awarded the
prize, as it was the only one of the three serious competitors
to comply with the conditions and fulfil the tests. It was an
*See Proceedings of the Committee of the House of Commons on the
Liverpool and Manchester Railroad Bill, Session 1825.
tReport to the Directors on the comparative merits of Loco-motive
and fixed engines as a moving power. By Jas. Walker and J. U. Rastrick,
Esqrs., civil engineers, 1829. A "second edition corrected" of each report,
separately printed, appeared later in the year.
13
entirely novel engine, for it embodied for the first time a multi¬
tubular boiler and a separate firebox. Its improved steaming
capacity meant that an enormous step forward had been made
—the locomotive had now surpassed the racehorse in speed, and
entered upon a wide sphere of employment as a rapid means
of transport both for passengers and freight. This in turn
gave a great impetus to further improvement of the locomotive
and to the spread of railways not only over Great Britain but
over the whole civilized world.
I should like to pursue the theme further—it is a fascinat¬
ing one—but all I will say is this : that while the general public
accepts with scarce a thought of thanks, at the hands of the
engineer, the conveniences and comforts of civilization, there
are two exceptions—the railway and the locomotive—these
excite interest and enthusiasm from youth to old age. The toy
of the child becomes the study of the youth and the occupation
of the man. Apart from these there is the enthusiast who
follows rivalry or racing on railroads as a kind of sport, studies
locomotive "form", builds miniature railways and forms
Stephenson Societies. Then we have the historian, ever ready
to spill ink over : "Who invented the locomotive", or who
introduced the blast pipe, etc., etc. It all proceeds, I think,
from the feeling that the locomotive is in some sense an animate
thing—a symbol of the restless spirit of this age, while the rail¬
way, like the highway, seems to suggest an outlet to wide fields
of human endeavour, of which our poet Longfellow speaks :
"Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city,
impatiently bearing
Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of
doing and daring."
ACKNOWLÉDUtC