Beginnings

In February 1804, former curate and amateur scientist, Davies Gilbert, received a letter from his friend, a Cornish mining engineer engaged in experiments at the Penydarren Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil.

“Last Saturday we lighted the fire in the Tram Wagon and worked it without the wheels to try the engine, and Monday we put it on the Tram Road. It worked very well and ran up hill and down with great ease, and very manageable. We have plenty of steam and power.”

The letter may seem dull and matter-of-fact, but the engineer was Richard Trevithick and the experiment he described was the very first public demonstration of a steam locomotive at work on an iron railway. It was an achievement with consequences far beyond Trevithick’s wildest imaginings.

Trevithick has never enjoyed the public fame he deserves. He financed his own experiments in those early years. He risked his own cash, earned by his own efforts, to build locomotives.

George Stephenson, on the other hand, had the backing of a powerful group of mine owners, who were prepared to put their money into this experimental system. Life is a great deal easier for the inventor when someone else is paying the bills, not to mention the wages. This is not to denigrate Stephenson’s immense achievements, but simply to put them in context: he was a developer of locomotives, not the initiator.