THE CORNISHMAN WHO RESHAPED THE WORLD
Each year the heritage sector celebrates a rich variety of anniversaries. April 13 marks what in theory should be the biggest celebration of them all – 250 years since the birth of engineer Richard Trevithick, who gave the railway locomotive to the world... a world that was never the same again.
In 2002, BBC TV broadcast 100 Greatest Britons, based on a public poll to see who the UK population considered to be the greatest figure of all time in the country’s history.
The winner was wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, with GWR engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel second, Princess Diana third, naturalist Charles Darwin fourth and William Shakespeare fifth. A scan of the 100 reveals comedian Eric Morecambe at position 32, singer Robbie Williams at 77 and Sex Pistols punk rocker John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) at 87.
Yet what about the man who invented the effective self-propelled locomotive, paving the way for the railway revolution that shrank the globe like never before, and in turn shaping the world as we know it? Not a single mention.
His name, by the way, is Richard Trevithick.
Today, Cornwall is renowned as a prime UK holiday destination. The significant and sudden rise in holiday rental prices as a result of the Government’s promised relaxation of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions is in itself testimony to that fact. However, 250 years ago, the delectable duchy had the same glorious sandy beaches, Atlantic surfing waves and rolling heatherclad hills – but the landscape was somewhat different.
The far south west of England was renowned for its mineral wealth, particularly tin and copper, since before Roman times, and in the 18th century was littered with the great hulks of engine houses and atmospheric engines as pioneered by Thomas Newcomen, pumping out vast amounts of water as the shafts went deeper and deeper in search of riches.
Education
Trevithick’s father, also Richard, was a senior mine captain at one of the greatest copper mines, Dolcoath, near Camborne. Young Richard attended school in Camborne, where by and large, he failed to impress – and was said to be “disobedient, slow, obstinate, spoilt, often absent and frequently inattentive”, possessing only basic written skills.
However, what was noticed as his remarkable ability with arithmetic. His practical and engineering skills were bestowed not by his schooling, but by his later work in the mines.
In 1765, Scotsman James Watt displayed his major improvement to Newcomen’s engine, the separate condenser, which greatly increased thermal efficiency and led to a reduction in the use of coal, which had to be brought from South Wales.
Watt patented his engines and rebuked all who tried to improve them, especially those who suggested the use of high-pressure steam, which he condemned as outright dangerous.
Trevithick disagreed, and set about designing a boiler which could contain high-pressure steam. His invention, the Cornish Boiler, carried the world over a monumental watershed. In terms of the Industrial Revolution, this was a colossal step into the future at a single stroke.
His cylindrical boiler had the fire grate inside, with an internal f lue. “I took the boiler out of the fire and put the fire into the boiler,” he said.
In short, all later boilers are, to a degree, descended from the Cornish Boiler.
Evolution
Having ensured the safe and reliable production of steam at pressure, Trevithick turned his attention to the working of the steam engine itself.
He concluded that the expansive properties of high pressure steam meant he could dispense with the separate condenser and simply exhaust the steam to atmosphere, reducing the bulk of the steam engine and widening its possible functions and locations. If you could reduce the massive steam engines which drained the Cornish mines to a comparatively miniscule proportion, what other applications might they have? Could they, perhaps, be mounted on wheels and power a moving vehicle?
Trevithick did not build the world’s first full-size self-propelled land vehicle. That accolade is normally bestowed on French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (February 26, 1725, to October 2, 1804). In 1869, for use by his country’s army, he built the ‘Fardier à vapeur’, described as the world’s first automobile.
However, his bulky design was beset by poor weight distribution and boiler performance, and after it underwent a few trials, the experiment was abandoned.
A major expense in the Cornish mining districts was the conveyance of the extracted ore to the nearest harbour for export, and the importation of coal for consumption by the beam engines, with pack horses employed to do the job both ways. What if, Trevithick conjectured, a machine could do the job more effectively and cheaply?
In short, Trevithick’s two most important innovations were first to recognise the power and potential of high pressure steam, and secondly to design and build boilers to contain it.
With these two key concepts realised, it was a relative leap forward to develop a steam vehicle which could propel itself.
THE TREVITHICK STEAM FLEET THEN AND NOW
The basic concept of railway locomotive preservation and motor museums was decades ahead in the future when Trevithick built his first self-propelled steam vehicles for road and rail. However, the heritage sector has produced several working replicas.
Taking his engines in chronological order as built, they are:
■ 1801: The Puffing Devil. Following experiments with models, Trevithick’s first engine emerged after experiments with models at the end of 1801. Its boiler had a single return f lue and the cylinder inset in the boiler.
Trevithick demonstrated it to the public on Christmas Eve with his cousin and fellow mine captain, engineer and inventor Andrew Vivian, at the controls, as it ascended the steep Beacon Hill, in Camborne. Onlookers jumped aboard for a ride – making it the world’s first motor car!
Legend has it that a week later, its timber frame caught fire, the boiler having run dry after being left in a shed while Trevithick and Vivian had lunch at a nearby inn. Also, it overturned on a subsequent outing.
In 2001 the Trevithick Society constructed a replica of the engine on the basis of sparse information. The replica is a handful to control even on modern surfaces, so it must have been a real trial on contemporary roads.
It has appeared in the annual Trevithick Day celebrations, held on the last Saturday in April.
■ 1803: London Steam Carriage. In Cornwall, Trevithick built a three-wheeled chassis with huge driving wheels and then sent it to London, where a classic carriage body was set on top of it. Standing 13ft high, trips from the city centre to Paddington and back were offered, with up to eight guests on board. It was the world’s first motor bus, and the first official public run of a self-powered passenger vehicle. However, it left a left a trail of damage around London and the experiment was abandoned.
A magnificent modern-day replica exists, built as a private venture by Tom Brogden.
■ 1803: Coalbrookdale: By this time, Trevithick was often away from Cornwall spreading the word about his engines for both stationary and mobile use. He developed relationships with foundries in Shropshire, at Bridgnorth and Coalbrookdale.
Because of the poor state of the roads in his day, he abandoned his experiments with road locomotives and at Coalbrookdale began to look at building machines to run on horsedrawn railways or tramway. His first railway engine is shrouded in mystery; there are references in letters and a drawing dated 1803. In 1804 we read of its “old cylinder cherished as a relic”. If it was ever completed, clearly its life was short.
In 1987, a non-working replica was built in Birmingham by Task Undertakings
Ltd, supported by the Manpower Services Commission at the Prince’s Trust, and displayed at Telford Central station.
In 2012, it was moved to make way for new passenger seating areas and taken to nearby Hadley Learning Community School’s engineering gallery, when it became a ‘visual prompt’ to discuss the local industry and how that has developed over the past two centuries.
In 1989, a working replica was built by apprentices at GKN Sankey in Telford. It now runs regularly on 3ft gauge track at Ironbridge Gorge Museum’s Blists Hill site.
■ 1804: Penydarren: The best-known Trevithick railway locomotive is the one that was first demonstrated in public.
In 1802, Trevithick built one of his high pressure steam engines to drive a hammer at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks, Merthyr Tydfil. With the assistance of Rees Jones, an employee of the ironworks and under the supervision of proprietor Samuel Homfray, he mounted the engine on wheels and turned it into a locomotive.
In 1803, Trevithick sold the patents for his locomotives to Samuel Homfray, who was so impressed with Trevithick’s locomotive that he made a 500 guineas bet with fellow ironmaster Richard Crawshay that Trevithick’s steam locomotive could haul 10 tons of iron along the Merthyr Tydfil Tramroad (reportedly 4ft 4in gauge) from Penydarren to Abercynon – a distance of 9¾ miles.
On February 21, 1804, the locomotive successfully hauled 10 tons of iron, five wagons and 70 men the full distance in four hours and five minutes, at an average speed of 2.4mph.
The 1804 locomotive, which comprised a boiler with a single return f lue mounted on a four-wheel frame, differed from the Coalbrookdale engine in that the cylinder was moved to the other end of the boiler so that the fire door was out of the way of the moving parts, and the crankshaft was placed at the chimney end.
At one end, a single cylinder with very long stroke was mounted partly in the boiler, and a piston rod crosshead ran out along a slidebar, an arrangement that looked like a giant trombone. As there was only one cylinder, this was coupled to a large flywheel mounted on one side.
The rotational inertia of the flywheel would even out the movement that was transmitted to a central cogwheel that was, in turn, connected to the driving wheels. It used a high-pressure cylinder without a condenser; the exhaust steam was sent up the chimney assisting the draught through the fire, increasing efficiency even more.
Homfrey won his bet. Trevithick proved that his locomotive could haul heavy carriages along a smooth iron road using the adhesive weight alone of a suitably heavy and powerful steam locomotive.
However, several of the tramroad’s cast iron plates broke under the weight of the locomotive, as they were intended only to support the lighter axle load of horse-drawn wagons.
Therefore, the railway age would not start in earnest, and the tramroad returned to tried-and-tested horse traction. Trevithick’s locomotive engine was placed on blocks and reverted to its original stationary job of driving hammers.
A full-scale working reconstruction of the Penydarren locomotive was commissioned in 1981 and delivered to the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum in Cardiff. When that closed, it was moved to the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, where it is housed today and occasionally steamed.
In 2004, the locomotive was a star guest at the National Railway Museum’s widely-acclaimed Railfest 2004 event, celebrating the bicentenary of the locomotive’s run at Pen-y-Darren.
■ 1805: Gateshead locomotive: Christopher Blackett, the proprietor of Wylam colliery near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, heard of the success
in Wales and wrote to Trevithick asking for locomotive designs. These were sent to John Whitfield at Gateshead, Trevithick’s agent, who, in 1804, built what was probably the first locomotive to have f langed wheels.
However, Blackett’s tramway comprised wooden rails, and, once again, Trevithick’s machine was too heavy for its track and quickly destroyed it.
The track was replaced in iron, but the problems continued. Similar in design to the Penydarren engine, it had the cylinder at the opposite end from the chimney, removing the risk of the fireman being decapitated. After its short-lived railway career, the 1805 locomotive was used as a stationary boiler to blow a furnace.
Despite the setbacks first time round, Blackett made enquiries about a second engine in 1808, but by then Trevithick had abandoned railway locomotives to pursue other projects.
■ 1808: Catch-Me-Who-Can: Trevithick’s last locomotive, Catch-Me-Who-Can, was Trevithick’s last throw at steam transportation. All the engines that came before shared ancestry with his stationary engine, used in industry and agriculture.
A simpler design intended solely to haul loads, Catch-Me-Who-Can still weighed some 10 tons and was built at Hazeldine Foundry, in Bridgnorth, by John Urpeth Rastrick.
It brief ly ran on a demonstration circle of track in 1808 near the site of the future Euston station. When coupled with an open carriage, the pair comprised the world’s first steamhauled passenger train.
The public could take a ride in the ‘steam circus’ for a shilling and experience ‘Mechanical Power Subduing Animal Speed.’ The experiment was Trevithick’s last throw of the dice and intended to show that rail travel was faster than horse.
Yet again, the temporary track – laid on wooden sleepers rather than granite blocks – gave endless trouble and eventually there was a serious derailment.
Catch-Me-Who-Can ended up being dismantled and installed in a Thames river barge.
The site in Bloomsbury has, in recent times, been identified by archaeologists as that occupied by the Chadwick Building, part of University College London.
The first decade of the 19th century appeared to view Trevithick’s railway locomotives as a novelty, and so for commercial reasons he gave up on the idea.
It was only the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, and the colossal and endless demand for horses by the British Army that led to colliery owners in the north taking a second look at the Cornishman’s invention.
In 1812, that twin-cylinder steam locomotive, built by Matthew Murray in Holbeck, successfully started replacing horses for hauling coal wagons on the edge-railed rackand-pinion Middleton Railway.
Yet it would be not until 1829, a quarter of a century after the Penydarren Tramroad demonstration, that Stephenson’s Rocket won the Rainhill Trials and established locomotives, not horses, as the premier form of traction – and itself as the world’s first modern steam locomotive.
Unlike George Stephenson, Trevithick never envisaged his invention as a mainstay of a national rail network, but merely as a more efficient means of conveying freight over the hilly landscapes between the Cornish mines and nearest harbours.
After many further projects and adventures, including 11 years spent in South America during which timed he was accused of ignoring his wife Jane back home in Hayle, Cornwall, he died from pneumonia in Dartford on April 22, 1833. Penniless, he was buried in an unmarked grave.
The following year, Cornwall’s first steamoperated line, the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway, opened.
RE-ENTER BRIDGNORTH AND THE SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY
Short-lived experiment that it was, there is no doubt that Catch-Me-Who-Can richly deserves its place on the timeline of railway history.
In 2001, a public meeting was held in Bridgnorth to discuss how best to mark the 2008 bicentenary of Catch-Me-Who-Can. The meeting was arranged by Chris Magner, who had already written a book on the locomotive. David Reynolds, an engineer at the Severn Valley Railway, proposed building a replica. Bridgnorth Low Town Action Group considered the idea, along with other proposals including a statue of Trevithick, but decided that it did not want to go down the replica road.
However, not everyone shared that view. In 2007 the charity Trevithick 200 was formed by local residents, for the express purpose of building, for the bargain price of £50,000, a replica of Catch-Me-Who-Can in Bridgnorth – the town where the original was built for Trevithick – and arranging a series of lectures, concerts and outdoor events to celebrate its bicentenary the following year.
The group’s first Trevithick 200 Steam Rally at Severn Park in July 2008 saw a unique gathering of historic engines and replicas from across the country, attracting more than 5000 visitors, and was followed by the even larger Rally In The Valley in 2009. Now managed by another group, Rally In The Valley has become an annual event.
In September 2008, the group took its replica on the road and displayed it, part completed but with a fire in its boiler, at a gala weekend at Barrow Hill roundhouse. The following year, the new Catch-Me-Who-Can visited the Museum of Iron in Coalbrookdale, and the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley in 2012.
In 2014 the locomotive spent the summer on loan to Het Spoorwegmuseum, the Dutch national railway museum in Utrecht, to help mark the 175th anniversary of railways in the Netherlands.
Based at the Severn Valley’s Bridgnorth Works, work on the replica by the group’s volunteers has proceeded at a steady pace over the years, with wooden cladding, its chimney, footplating and bars fitted, so it appears increasingly like the original.
The group’s current focus of attention is on completing the replica and having it approved for use. It goes without saying that the prospect of having it run on a full-length line, maybe with an appropriate replica coach, could become a major attraction at steam galas, not only in Bridgnorth but everywhere.
The project has been partially funded by Shropshire Council, which has provided a grant under the Local Joint Committee scheme.
As highlighted in issue 274, Bridgnorth Town Council has established a two-mile Town Art Trail, waymarked by a series of aluminium statues of Catch-Me-Who-Can, each designed by a local artist and cast by apprentices at Grainger & Worrall Ltd into a shape that pays tribute to Trevithick’s locomotive.
The 13th statue on the trail was installed in the grounds of Bridgnorth Castle in October. Free maps can be downloaded at https:// bridgnorth-art-trail.org.uk, to locate all of the statues while appreciating the finer points of the town’s heritage.
➜ To support the Trevithick 200 project either by way of donation or volunteering, email mail@catchmewhocan.org.uk or write to: Trevithick 200, 70 Well Meadow, Bridgnorth, WV15 6DE.
THE TREVITHICK SOCIETY
The Trevithick Society was established in 1935 when a small group of local engineers formed a Committee to preserve the Cornish engines at Levant Mine. The mine had closed in 1930 and the scrap merchants were about to move in.
The Cornish Engines Preservation Committee saved the winding engine at Levant and then looked to see which other engines might be preserved. This aim acquired a greater urgency when the Second World War broke out and scrap metal was at a premium.
By 1943, the committee had become a society and pursued its mission. The winding and pumping engines at East Pool Mine were acquired, as well as a small engine from a china clay pit, and the society was also instrumental in preserving the 80in pumping engine at Robinson’s Shaft, South Crofty.
By the 1960s, the upkeep of this portfolio was clearly too much for a small society, so in 1967 the engines were transferred to the National Trust with a substantial endowment.
In 1970 the Cornish Engines Preservation Society merged with the Cornish Waterwheels Preservation Society, the combination taking the name of Cornwall’s most celebrated engineer.
The Trevithick Society is now Cornwall’s industrial archaeology society for ‘the study of the history of industry and technology in Cornwall’.
Members receive a quarterly newsletter and an annual journal. More details can be found at trevithicksociety.info