The Beginning of the Rail Transport Era

The Rainhill locomotive trials marked the opening of a new railway era. What is more they established, beyond all question, the superiority of the “Iron Horse” over existing means of movement, and paved the way for the extensive developments in the locomotive field that have been witnessed in the century which has succeeded the victory of Stephenson's far-famed “Rocket” engine that momentous October day. It is indeed a big jump from the crude locomotives which appeared in the Rainhill trials to the modern high-power steam railway engine. Yet, even at this time, there is a distinct likeness between our own locomotives and those of the pioneers of 1829. Without the patient efforts and unsparing genius of George Stephenson and his co-workers, the efficient locomotives of to-day could never have been produced. Lacking the aid of machines such as these, transportation would now have been in a much more backward state than is happily the case. Let us all, therefore, in this banner year in railway history, doff our caps in token of our appreciation of Stephenson's immense contribution to the progress of railways—and, indeed, of mankind in general.