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

162 LIFE OF GEOEGE STEPHENSON. [chap. xiv.
pertinacious, that public men pronounced him to be a " bore," and
in the town of Nottingham, where he then lived, those who knew
him declared him to be " cracked."
William Howitt, who frequently met Gray at that time, has
published a lively portraiture* of this indefatigable and enthu-
siastic projector, who seized all men by the button, and would
not let them go until he had unravelled to them his wonderful
scheme. With Thomas Gray, "begin where you would, on
whatever subject—the weather, the news, the political movement
or event of the day—it would not be many minutes before
you would be enveloped with steam, and listening to an harangue
on the practicability and immense advantages, to the nation and
to every man in it, of ' a general iron railway.' " f
While Thomas Gray was thus agitating the general adoption
of railways, George Stephenson was doing much more—he was
making railways, and building efficient locomotives with which
to work them. Although he had not lost faith in the powers
of the locomotive, he had now waited for so many years without
observing any prospect of their extended use, that his old idea
of removing his skill and small capital to the United States seems
for a time to have revived. Before becoming a sleeping partner
in a small foundry at Forth Banks, in Newcastle, managed by
Mr. John Burrell, he had thrown out the suggestion that it would
be a good speculation for them to emigrate to North America,
* People's Journal, August 1st, 1846. Art. "A word for Thomas Gray, the
Author of the General Railway System."
t Thomas Gray never got beyond his idea of Blenkinsop's cogged wheel
and cogged rail. Probably he was not aware that Blackett and Stephenson
had both, as early as 1814, demonstrated the cogs to be not only unnecessary,
but positive impediments to the working of the locomotive engine through the
jolting and friction which they caused. Notwithstanding the triumphant
success of the smooth-wheeled locomotive and the smooth rail on the Liverpool
and Manchester line in 1830, we iind Thomas Gray in the following year
(Mechanics' Magazine, May 14th, 1831), declaring it to be an expensive blunder.
He urged the adoption of a greased road, with his favorite device of cog -rails and
racks placed outside the smooth rails. Had the advice of this " founder of the
railway system," as his friends have styled him, been adopted, the modern railway
system would have been simply impracticable. But Thomas Gray himself
never claimed to be the inventor or discoverer of railways. He laboured under
the disadvantage of not being a mechanic. His engraving of a railway train,
prefixed to his book, shows that, if once set in motion, it could not have been
pulled up without going to pieces.