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

246 LIFE OF GEOEGE STEPHENSON. [chap. xxi.
Russia to examine the internal communications of England, and
who visited the Stockton and Darlington Railway after it was
opened for traffic, declared that it could never answer as a route
for passengers, in comparison with stage-coaches. He expressed
his decided preference for the Atmospheric Railway, then pro-
posed by Mr. Vallance between Brighton and Shoreham, which
he considered " very far superior " to the locomotive system-
Mr. Palmer, in his " Description of a Railway," declared that
" there is no instance of any locomotive engine having (regularly,
and as a constant rate) travelled faster than, if so fast as, six
miles an hour." Vallance, in his letter to Ricardo, pronounced
that " locomotive engines cannot, on an open railway, ever be
driven so fast as horses will draw us ;
" and that railways as
an investment would be unproductive, and as an effective means
of transit a failure. Tredgold, in his " Practical Treatise on
Railroads and Carriages," dismissed the locomotive in favour of
the fixed-engine system, which he pronounced to be cheaper as
well as safer. " Locomotives," he said, " must always be objec-
tionable on a railroad for general use, where it is attempted to
give them a considerable degree of speed." As to the speed of
railway travelling being equal to that of horses on common roads,
Mr. Tredgold entertained great doubts. " That any general
system of carrying passengers would answer, to go at a velocity
exceeding ten miles an hour, or thereabouts, is extremely improbable."
*
The most celebrated engineers offered no opinion on the sub-
ject. They did not believe in the locomotive, and would not
even give themselves the trouble to examine it. The ridicule
with which G-eorge Stephenson had been assailed by the barris-
ters before the Parliamentary Committee had pleased them
greatly. They did not relish the idea of a man who had picked
up his experience at Newcastle coal-pits appearing in the capac-
ity of a leading engineer before Parliament, and attempting to
establish a new system of internal communication in the country.
Telford and the Rennies were then the great lights of the en-
gineering world. The former was consulted by the Government
on the subject of the power to be employed to work the
* Tredgold on Railroads, 2d ed. p. 119.