Rainhill trials

• 1. Introduction

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  The Rainhill trials began on the 6th of October 1829, on a straight, level mile of track in Lancashire, with somewhere between ten thousand and fifteen thousand spectators crowded along the lineside, bands playing, and five locomotives about to settle one of the great engineering arguments of the age. The question was simple but consequential: could steam locomotives reliably haul trains, or should the nearly-completed Liverpool and Manchester Railway run its carriages on cables pulled by stationary steam engines instead? George Stephenson, appointed as the railway's engineer in 1826, had been insisting locomotives were the answer. The directors were not convinced. So they offered a prize of five hundred pounds, wrote out a demanding set of rules, appointed three judges, and let the machines speak for themselves. What followed over six days would determine how railways worked for generations. But the outcome was not obvious from the start. One entrant reached a speed that made the crowd gasp. Another came agonizingly close before a cracked cylinder ended its run. And the locomotive that eventually won did so not by being the fastest or the most modern, but by being the only one still running when the competition ended.

• 2. The Rules and Judges

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  John Urpeth Rastrick, a locomotive engineer from Stourbridge, was one of three judges selected to oversee the trials. Alongside him sat Nicholas Wood, a mining engineer from Killingworth with substantial locomotive design experience, and John Kennedy, a Manchester cotton spinner who had been a major advocate for the railway. Their task was to apply a ruleset that had gone through several revisions before the final version was agreed upon.

  The rules were precise and demanding. Each locomotive had to be weighed at eight in the morning with a full boiler of cold water and no fuel in the firebox. Its assigned load was set at three times its own weight. The tender carrying fuel and water counted as part of that load. Steam had to reach fifty pounds per square inch before the engine could depart. Each trip was one and three-quarter miles each way, with an eighth of a mile at each end for acceleration and braking, leaving one and a half miles at full speed in the middle. Ten trips completed one journey equivalent to the Liverpool-to-Manchester run; the engine then refuelled and made ten more trips back. The average speed across all of this had to reach at least ten miles per hour.

  The fuel consumed during steam raising was measured, the time of every trip was recorded accurately, and the locomotive had to demonstrate it could run the equivalent of a full return journey between the two cities. These were not showcase runs. They were endurance tests designed to prove or disprove whether a locomotive could do the job a working railway demanded.

• 3. Five Competitors

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  Ten locomotives were officially entered, but when the 6th of October arrived, only five were present and able to run. The five were as different from one another as their builders.

  Cycloped, built by Thomas Shaw Brandreth, was not a steam locomotive at all. It drew its power from a horse walking on a drive belt. It was the first to leave the competition, and it left in the most dramatic fashion: an accident caused the horse to burst through the floor of the engine.

  Perseverance, built by Timothy Burstall, arrived at Rainhill already damaged in transit. Burstall spent the first five days of the six-day trial repairing it. On the sixth day it finally ran, but it never reached the required ten miles per hour. It was withdrawn and awarded a consolation prize of twenty-five pounds.

  Sans Pareil, built by Timothy Hackworth, very nearly competed. Before the trials began, officials found it was three hundred pounds overweight, raising doubts about whether it would be allowed to start at all. It was permitted to run. It completed eight trips before a cylinder cracked and ended its attempt. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway bought it anyway, and it ran on the line for two years before being leased to the Bolton and Leigh Railway.

  Novelty, built by John Ericsson and John Braithwaite, was the world's first tank locomotive. It was lighter and faster than anything else on the track, and on the first day it reached twenty-eight miles per hour. It was the crowd favourite. But a damaged boiler pipe could not be properly repaired on site. Novelty ran the following day and reached fifteen miles per hour before the repaired pipe failed again and the damage became severe enough to end its competition.

• 4. Rocket's Run

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  The Times published a full report of the trials on the 12th of October 1829, including a detailed account of the Rocket's performance. On the third day, the newspaper recorded that George and Robert Stephenson's locomotive weighed four tons and five hundredweight with its water, and pulled a load of twelve tons fifteen hundredweight. With the additional passengers who rode along, the total came to around thirteen tons.

  The first run of thirty-five miles, equivalent to ten trips, took three hours and ten minutes, giving an average speed of more than eleven miles per hour including all stops. After a sixteen-minute break for water, the engine set off again and ran the second thirty-five miles in two hours and fifty-two minutes, averaging more than twelve miles per hour. During the journey, speeds in full motion ranged from fourteen to seventeen miles per hour. The Times noted that coke consumption across the full seventy miles did not exceed half a ton.

  On the fifth day, something more striking happened. The Rocket's tender was detached, and the engine alone ran the track. The Times reported it moved at thirty-two miles per hour, and described the sight as comparable to a swallow darting through the air. Spectators called out involuntarily: "The power of steam." The Rocket finished as the only locomotive to complete the required trials, averaging twelve miles per hour across the competition and reaching a top speed of thirty miles per hour while hauling thirteen tons. It was declared the winner of the five-hundred-pound prize. George and Robert Stephenson were awarded the contract to supply locomotives for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. After the trials, the Rocket was taken to the Whiston incline, where it hauled eight tons at sixteen miles per hour and twelve tons up a gradient of one in ninety-six.

• 5. Replaying History

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  In May 1980, the Rocket 150 celebration marked the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Replicas of Novelty, Sans Pareil, and Rocket, along with a coach, ran at the event alongside a cavalcade of up to forty steam and diesel locomotives.

  The Rocket replica ran into difficulty on the first day. Exiting the Bold Colliery sidings, it came off the rails and buckled the rim of one of its large drive wheels. That evening, senior staff from a St Helens road transport company met a former colleague of the replica's builder at a Liverpool hotel. They agreed to manufacture steel wedges overnight in their nearby workshops to fix the wheel before the next day's parade. At the same time, British Rail put a team into the sidings at Bold to straighten the bent rails. Both tasks were completed in time, and the Rocket ran on the final two days. Sans Pareil was pushed by Lion, and Novelty rode on a wagon hauled by LMS Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 number 5000. Lion was at that time the oldest operable steam locomotive in existence. Two Class 86 electric locomotives, number 86214 named Sans Pareil and number 86235 named Novelty, were painted in a variation of Large Logo Rail Blue with the Rocket 150 motif replacing the British Rail logo.

  A more rigorous replay came in 2002, when replica engines ran the trials again over the Llangollen Railway in Wales. Neither Sans Pareil, which completed eleven of twenty runs, nor Novelty, which completed ten of twenty, finished the course. Calculations accounting for differences in crew experience, fuel, replica modifications, and modern safety requirements confirmed that Rocket would still have won. Novelty nearly matched Rocket for efficiency, but its firebox design allowed molten ash called clinker to accumulate and gradually cut off the air supply, slowing it to a halt. The 2002 restaging was the subject of a 2003 BBC Timewatch documentary.