The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

154 LIFE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON. [chap. xiv.
way locomotion haunted him like a passion. He went to Cam-
borne, in Cornwall, to see Trevethick upon the subject, in 1803,
and witnessed the performances of his engine at Merthyr Tyd-
vil in the following year. In an article which he published in
one of the early numbers of the " Eailway Magazine," he stated
that as early as 1803 he contemplated the projection of a railway
between Liverpool and Manchester.* Many years, how-
ever, elapsed before he proceeded to enter upon the survey. In
the mean time he was occupied with other projects.
In 1806 he contemplated the formation of a tramway from
Birmingham towards Wedgebury and the Staffordshire coal dis-
tricts. We next find him projecting and partly forming a tramway
from the Clutton Colliery, belonging to the Earl of War-
wick,—about twelve miles in length,—to Bristol. And about
the same time he entered into an arrangement with Mr. Prothe-
roe to construct another tramway from the Forest of Dean to
Gloucester. About 1814 he was cutting, at his own expense, a
canal between Birmingham and Stratford-on-Avon ; and some
years after, in conjunction with Lord Eedesdale, he constructed
a railway from Stratford-on-Avon to Moreton-in-the-Marsh,
the first railway in that district laid with wrought iron rails, for
the special purpose of being worked by locomotive power.
In the year 1815, we find Mr. James addressing a " Letter to
the Prince Regent," in which he showed that he anticipated rapid
locomotion by steam and other means. His project was to form
a railway between London and Chatham, together with a capa-
cious war-dock at the latter place, the gates of which were to be
formed with caissons, after the plan of the docks of the then
unknown Russian war-port of Sebastopol. Those caissons were
and Mr. James had got
then being manufactured in England ;
his idea of them from Upton, the engineer, with whom he was
well acquainted. Nothing, however, came of this grand Chatham
project.
* There were numerous projectors of railways for the accommodation of the
large towns, even at that early period. Thus we find in the Leeds Mercwy of
the 16th January, 1802, a letter signed " Mercator," in which the formation of
a line of railway from Leeds to Selby was strongly recommended. Thirty
years, however, passed, before that railway w.is formed.
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