Richard Trevithick was a mechanical engineer employed by Samuel Homfray, the owner of the Penydarren Ironworks located in Merthyr Tydfil County Borough in Wales. Often referred to as a genius Trevithick was instrumental at developing the use of steam power as a propulsion method.

Richard Trevithick

In 1803 Homfray asked Trevithick to produce a locomotive to be used to transport iron from Penydarren to the nearest canal. By early 1804 Trevithick  had a steam engine ready. The engine, used a single horizontal cylinder as a boiler, an 8 foot high flywheel and a long piston-rod riding on four steel wheels on a flanged cast iron tracks.

On the morning of February 14, 1804 the locomotive made its first successful test run. A week later on February 21st the steam locomotive managed to haul ten tons of iron, seventy passengers and five wagons from the ironworks at Penydarren to the Merthyr-Cardiff  Shipping Canal. During the nine mile journey Trevithick’s Penydarren locomotive reached speeds of nearly five miles an hour.

The Penydarren locomotive, with its single vertical cylinder, 8 foot flywheel and long piston-rod, became the first steam engine to run successfully on rails. Trevithick’s locomotive employed a very important principle, turning the exhaust steam up the chimney to  producing a draft which drew the hot gases from the fire more powerfully through the boiler increasing the creation of more steam for propulsion.

The Penydarren Locomotive

Trevithick’s steam locomotive only made three journeys. Each time the seven-ton steam engine broke the cast iron rails. Samuel Homfray came to the conclusion that Trevithick’s invention was unlikely to reduce his transport costs and so he decided to abandon the project.

But Trevithick’s genius wasn’t thwarted he continued to use steam as a means of propultion delivering several other firsts in steam power.

He tried several more times to interest investors in steam powered railway locomotives as a means of transportation. His last attempt at rail locomotion introduced the Catch-me-who-can locomotive, the first fare paying passenger train.

Ticket For Trevithick's Train Ride

Weighing in at just eight tons, the portable engine ran on a circle of track at Bloomsbury in London where the demonstration became popularly known as the ‘steam circus’. Hidden from the public gaze by a tall circular wooden fence, Londoners could, buy a one shilling ticket to ride behind the locomotive in a converted carriage at heady speeds of up to twelve miles an hour. The attraction proved popular as a sideshow entertainment, but the London gentry were uninterested in investing their money in it.

Disappointed, Trevithick turned his attentions elsewhere and left the further promotion of the steam locomotive to others.

However as the first  locomotive engine and the first recorded occasion upon which fare paying passengers had been hauled behind any sort of locomotive, the  Penydarren and the Catch-me-who-can had secured their places as  legends of the rails for Trevithick in railroad history.

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