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Steam (Edited from Wikipedia)

SUMMARY

A is a railway locomotive that produces its pulling power through a . These are fueled by burning combustible material—usually coal, wood, or oil—to produce steam in a . The steam moves reciprocating which are mechanically connected to the locomotive's main wheels.

Both fuel and water supplies are carried with the locomotive, either on the locomotive itself or in wagons (tenders) pulled behind. The first steam locomotive, made by , first operated on 21 February 1804, three years after the road locomotive he made in 1801.

Steam locomotives were first developed in Great Britain during the early 19th century and used for railway transport until the middle of the 20th century. From the early 1900s they were gradually superseded by electric and diesel locomotives, with full conversions to electric and diesel power beginning in the late 1930s. The majority of steam locomotives were retired from regular service by the 1980s, though several continue to run on tourist and heritage lines.

HISTORY

The earliest railways employed horses to draw carts along railway tracks. In 1784, , a Scottish inventor, built a small-scale prototype of a steam road locomotive.

The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive, called the ' Locomotive,' was also built by Richard Trevithick in the . On 21 February 1804, the world's first railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks. Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success.

The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high- steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency. Trevithick visited the Newcastle area in 1804 and had a ready audience of colliery owners and engineers. The visit was so successful that the colliery railways in north-east

1 became the leading center for experimentation and development of the steam locomotive.

Trevithick continued his own steam propulsion experiments through another trio of locomotives, concluding with the in 1808. Four years later, the successful twin- locomotive, , by debuted in 1812. Another well known early locomotive was Puffing Billy built 1813–14 by engineer . It was intended to on the Colliery near . This locomotive is the oldest preserved, and is on display in the Science Museum, .

George Stephenson built Locomotion No. 1 for the Stockton and Railway, north-east England, which was the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829, his son Robert built in Newcastle The Rocket which was entered in and won the . This success led to the company emerging as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the UK, US and much of Europe. The and Manchester Railway opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for passenger and supply trains.

Richard Trevithick

Richard Trevithick was born in the heart of one of the rich mineral areas of , in England, in 1771. He was the youngest-but-one child and the only boy in a family of six children. He was very tall for the era at 6 ft 2in, as well as athletic. He was more interested in sports than schoolwork. Sent to the village school at , he did not take much advantage of the education provided – one of his school masters described him as "a disobedient, slow, obstinate, spoiled boy, frequently absent and very inattentive". An exception was arithmetic, for which he had an aptitude, but arrived at the correct answers by unconventional means.

Trevithick was the son of mine "captain" Richard Trevithick (1735–1797) and of miner's daughter Ann Teague (died 1810). As a child he would watch steam engines pump water from the deep and mines in Cornwall. For a time he was a neighbor to William Murdoch, the steam carriage pioneer, and would have been influenced by his experiments with steam-powered road locomotion.

Trevithick first went to work at the age of 19 at the East Stray Park Mine. He was enthusiastic and quickly gained the status as a consultant, unusual for such a young person. He was popular with the miners because of the respect they had for his father.

2 Until this time, steam engines, used in mines to pump out water, were of the condensing or atmospheric type, originally invented by in 1712. They became known as low-pressure engines. , on behalf of his partnership with , held a number of for improving the efficiency of Newcomen's engine, including the "separate condenser .”

Trevithick became engineer at the Ding Dong Mine in 1797, and there (in conjunction with Edward Bull) he pioneered the use of high-pressure steam. He worked on building and modifying steam engines to avoid the royalties due to Watt on the separate condenser patent. At Ding Dong served him a court order to stop.

As his experience grew, he realized that improvements in boiler technology now permitted the safe production of high-pressure steam, which could move a in a steam engine on its own account, instead of using pressure near to atmospheric in a condensing engine.

He was not the first to think of so-called "strong steam". William Murdoch had developed and demonstrated a model steam carriage, starting in 1784, and demonstrated it to Trevithick at his request in 1794. In fact, Trevithick lived next door to Murdoch in in 1797 and 1798. in the U.S. had also concerned himself with the concept, but there is no indication that his ideas had ever come to Trevithick's attention.

According to his son Francis, Trevithick was the first to make high-pressure steam work in England in 1799, although other sources say he had invented his first high-pressure engine by 1797. Not only would a high-pressure steam engine eliminate the condenser, but it would allow the use of a smaller cylinder, saving space and weight. He reasoned that his engine could now be more compact, lighter and small enough to carry its own weight even with a carriage attached.

Trevithick started building his first models of high-pressure steam engines, initially a stationary one and then one attached to a road carriage. Exhaust steam was vented via a vertical pipe or straight into the atmosphere, thus avoiding a condenser and any possible infringements of Watt's patent. The linear motion of the piston was directly converted into circular motion via a .

Trevithick built a full-size steam road locomotive in 1801 on a site near the present day Fore Street in Camborne. Trevithick named his carriage Puffing Devil and on Christmas Eve that year, he demonstrated it by successfully carrying six passengers up Fore Street and then continuing on up , from Camborne Cross, to the nearby village

3 of Beacon. His cousin and associate, Andrew Vivian, steered the . This is widely recognized as the first demonstration of transportation powered by steam.

During further tests, Trevithick's locomotive broke down three days later after passing over a gully in the road. The was left under some shelter with the fire still burning whilst the operators retired to a nearby public house for a meal of roast goose and drinks. Meanwhile, the water boiled off, the engine overheated and the machine burned, destroying it. Trevithick did not consider this a serious setback, but rather operator error.

In 1802, Trevithick took out a patent for his high-pressure steam engine. To prove his ideas, he built a at the Coalbrookdale Company's works in in 1802, forcing water to a measured height to measure the work done.

The Coalbrookdale company then built a rail locomotive for him, but little is known about it, including whether or not it actually ran. To date, the only known information about it comes from a drawing preserved at the Science Museum, London, together with a letter written by Trevithick to his friend, Davies Giddy.

The design incorporated a single horizontal cylinder enclosed in a return-flue boiler. A drove the wheels on one side through spur , and the were mounted directly on the boiler, with no frame. On the drawing, the piston-rod, guide-bars and cross-head are located directly above the firebox door, thus making the engine extremely dangerous to fire while moving.

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