page 29

William Murdock's Famous Locomotive

In 1784 William Murdock, an associate of James Watt, built the first locomotive to run on English soil. This was a model about 21 inches high. The above illustration shows enlarged for the reader's benefit. The engine had a single vertical cylinder extending a short distance into the top of the square copper boiler which was heated by a lamp suspended beneath it. Murdock's engine attained a speed of six to eight miles per hour. Being very secretive about his invention, Murdock made trial trips at night very much to the alarm of the Vicar of Reduith whose quiet walk to his church was broken one evening by what appeared to be an indescribable creature of legs, arms and wheels and aglow with fire.

(From “The Development of the Locomotive” published by The Central Steel Company, Massillon, Ohio, U.S.A.)