STEAM LOCOMOTIVE
A steam locomotive is a locomotive powered by steam. The term usually refers to its use on railways, but can also refer to a "road locomotive" such as a traction engine or steamroller.
Beginning in Britain, steam locomotives dominated railway usage from the start of the 19th century, until the middle of the 20th Century. They were gradually improved and developed in their over 150 years of development and use. Starting in about 1930 other types of engines were developed and steam locomotives were gradually superseded by diesel and electric locomotives.
Origins
The earliest railways employed horses to draw carts along railed tracks.
As the development of steam engines progressed through the 1700s, various attempts were made to apply them to road and railway use. In 1784 William Murdoch a Scottish inventor built a prototype steam road locomotive. The first-known working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by Steamboat Pioneer John Fitch in the United States in between 1780 and 1794. This is the first known steam locomotive to use interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks. The model still exists at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus.
The first full scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in the United Kingdom, and on 21 February 1804 the world's first railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales Accompanied with Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. Then followed the successful twin cylinder locomotive Salamanca by Matthew Murray for the edge railed rack and pinion Middleton Railway in 1812. In 1825 George Stephenson built the Locomotion for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, north east England, which was the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829 he built The Rocket which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. This success led to Stephenson establishing his company as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the United Kingdom, United States and much of Europe. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for both passenger and freight trains.
The United States started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb. This was the first locomotive to run in America, although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction, rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The first successful steam railway in the US was the South Carolina Railroad whose inaugural train ran on December 25, 1830 hauled by the Best Friend of Charleston. Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from England, including the Stourbridge Lion and the John Bull, but a domestic locomotive manufacturing industry was quickly established, with locomotives like the DeWitt Clinton being built in the 1830s.
The first railway service in Continental Europe (or for that matter, outside the United Kingdom and the United States) was opened on May 5, 1835 in Belgium, between Mechelen and Brussels. The name of the locomotive used was The Elephant.
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