"Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago but it is put to better use."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
In the late eighteenth century, there were many wagonways and tramways in Europe. These had iron rails and horsedrawn wagons fitted with flanged wheels. The first steam locomotive to run on rails was built by Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) of Cornwall, England. Trevithick was encouraged to develop an engine that was more efficient and cheaper to run than the low-pressure Watt and Newcomen type; he was the first to harness high-pressure steam.
Trevithick's Puffing Devil (1801) and London Steam Carriage (1803) were demonstration steam vehicles, but on February 21, 1804, his Penydarren locomotive pulled five wagons, seventy passengers, and 10 tons of iron down an iron railway between Merthyr Tydfil and Abercynnon in south Wales. This reasonably reliable and robust machine proved that heavy trucks could be hauled along low-gradient, smooth railway lines by a smooth-wheeled, heavy locomotive.
By 1825 fellow Englishman George Stephenson had built "a better railway engine—called the Locomotion. It pulled six coal wagons and 450 passengers in twenty-one coaches down the 9 miles (14.5 km) of railway between Stockton and Darlington, a journey that took about one hour.
Improvements came at a great pace. In October 1829, at the Rainhill Trials—a competition to select a locomotive for the first intercity railway line, between Liverpool and Manchester—George and Robert Stephenson's Rocket covered 50 miles (80 km) at a speed of 12 miles per hour (19 kph). This engine had a multitubular boiler hat increased steam production.
Soon four-wheeled locomotives with highly inclined cylinders were being replaced by more stable locomotives with longer boilers, horizontal inside- frame cylinders, and more and larger wheels.
