Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 30, 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was an English inventor, engineer and builder of the world's first working steam locomotive. Trevithick was the son of a mine captain, and as a child, would watch steam engines pump water from the deep tin and copper mines common in Cornwall. He was not the first to think of so-called "strong steam", but he was the first to make it work. Trevithick built a full-size steam road carriage in 1801, which he named Puffing Devil, and used it to demonstrate the technology on December 24 by successfully carrying several men up Camborne Hill and then continuing on to the nearby village of Beacon. In 1802 Trevithick built one of his high pressure steam engines to drive an automatic hammer at the Pen-y-Daren iron works near Merthyr in South Wales. With the assistance of Rees Jones, an employee of the iron works and under the supervision of Samuel Homfray, the proprietor, he mounted the engine on a wagon chassis and turned it into a locomotive. Trevithick's locomotive was probably the very first ever to run on rails and therefore the first ever train.

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