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

CHAP. XIX.] EXAinNATION IN COMMITTEE. 213
locomotive go at the rate of twelve miles an hour ! It was so
grossly in the teeth of all the experience of honourable members,
that the man must certainly be labouring under a delusion !
And yet his large experience of railways and locomotives, as
described by himself to the Committee, entitled this " untaught,
inarticulate genius," as he has so well been styled, to speak with
confidence on such a subject. Beginning with his experience as
brakesman at Killingworth in 1803, he went on to state that he
had been appointed to take the entire charge of the steam-engines
in 1813, and superintended the railroads connected with the nu-
merous collieries of the Grand Allies from that time downwards.
He had laid down or superintended the railways at Borrertown,
Mount Moor, Spring Darlington, Bedington, Hetton, and Darlington,
besides improving those of Killingworth, South Moor,
and Derwent Brook. He had constructed fifty-five steamengines,
of which sixteen were locomotives. Some of these had
been sent to France. The only accident that had occurred to
any of these engines was on the occasion of the tubes in one of
them wearing out, by which a man and boy were slightly scalded.
The engines constructed by him for the working of the Killing-
worth Railroad, eleven years before, had continued steadily at
work ever since, and fulfilled his most sanguine expectations.
He was prepared to prove the safety of working high-pressure
locomotives on a railroad, and the superiority of this mode of
transporting goods over all others. As to speed, he said he had
recommended eight miles an hour with twenty tons, and four miles
an hour with forty tons ; but he was quite confident that much
more might be done. Indeed, he had no doubt they might go at
the rate of twelve miles.
As to the charge that locomotives on a railroad would so ter-
rify the horses in- the neighbourhood, that to travel on horseback
or to plough the adjoining fields would be rendered highly
dangerous, the witness said that horses learnt to take no notice
of them, though there were horses that would shy at a wheel-
barrow. A mail coach was likely to be more shied at by horses
than a locomotive. In the neighbourhood of Killingworth, the
cattle in the fields went on grazing while the engines passed
them, and the farmers made no coniplaints.