The Liverpool & Manchester Railway was Britain's first mainline,
intercity railway; opened in 1830 it was at the cutting edge of railway
technology. Engineered by George Stephenson and his team - John Dixon,
William Allcard, Joseph Locke - the project faced many obstacles both
before and after opening, including local opposition and the choice of
motive power, resulting in the Rainhill Trials of 1829.
Much of the success of the line can be attributed to the excellence of
its engineering but also its fleet of pioneering locomotives built by
Robert Stephenson & Co. of Newcastle. This is the story of those
locomotives, and the men who worked on them, at a time when the
locomotive was still in its infancy.
Using extensive archival research, coupled with lessons learned from
operating early replica locomotives such as Rocket and Planet, Anthony
Dawson explores how the locomotive rapidly developed in response to the
demands of the first intercity railway, and some of the technological
dead ends along the way.