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

CHAP. XXI.] ENGINEEES IGNORAJSIT OF THE LOOOJIOTIVE. 247
Liverpool line, on the occasion of the directors applying to the
Exchequer Loan Commissioners to forego their security of 30
per cent, of the calls, which the directors wished to raise to enable
them to proceed more expeditiously with tKe works. Mr.
Telford's report was, however, so unsatisfactoiy that the Commissioners
would not release any part of the calls. All that Mr.
Telford would say on the subject of the power to be employed
was, that the use of horses* had been done away with by in-
troducing two sets of inclined planes, and he considered this an
evU, inasmuch as the planes must be worked either by locomotive
or fixed engines ; " but," he said, " which of the two latter modes
shall be adopted, I understand has not yet been finally deter-
mined ;
and both being recent projects, in which I have had no
experience, I cannot take upon me to say whether either will
fully answer in practice.'' And yet the locomotive engine had
been in regular use on the Killingworth Railway for fifteen
years at the time when Mr. Telford made this report in 1829.
He himself had laid out railways, and it was part of his business
to make himself familiar with the best mode of working them.
But the only successful engines were those of George Stephenson
and Mr. Telford, in common with the leading professional men
of his day, studiously kept aloof from him. Indeed, had the es-
* The engineers who were examined before Parliament in support of the
second Liverpool and Manchester Bill, were opposed to the locomotive, in their
entire ignorance of its construction and properties ; indeed, they would not
give themselves the trouble to understand it. Their intention was so to lay
out the line that it should be worlced by horses. One of the gradients at
Bainbill, as originally planned by them, was very steep, about one in fifty, and
the counsel for the opposition, in cross-examining one of the eminent engineers
employed for the promoters, asked him if he knew " how much additional
power would be requu-ed to surmount a gradient of one in fifty." "iNot very
much," replied the engineer; "a little more whipcord will do it." The
counsel for the opposition, in the course of his reply, alluded to this evidence.
"Mr. ," said he, "has told you, that by means of a little whipcord, a
rising gradient, so steep as one foot in fifty, is to be overcome. / know where
the whipcord, and not a little whipcord, ought to have been applied, before
that witness left school." Some years after, when the Brighton Eailway Bill
was before Parliament, the same eminent engineer was asked by counsel
" whether the wheels of the locomotive revolved on the axle or were fixed to
it?" The engineer was rather taken aback, for he did not know; but he
adroitly got out of the difficulty by saying, " Really, that is a matter entirely
"
of detail, to be settled by mechanics !
;