The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 6 (October 1, 1929)
The Great Contest
The Great Contest.
The course at Rainhill consisted of a level stretch of track about nine miles east of Liverpool. The first test took the form of running backwards and forwards over a measured mile and a half, one-eighth of a mile being allowed at each end in addition for starting and stopping. Later the condition was imposed that the locomotives should be required to run seventy miles practically continuously at an average speed of not less than ten miles an hour. Immense crowds gathered on the morning of October 6th, 1829, and it was only with difficulty that the track could be cleared for the contestants. Graphic pen and brush pictures have been given us by historians and artists of the day of the gay scene on that historic morning. Lords and ladies, engineers and cotton merchants, simple country folk, and city workers, all classes were represented, and it was with a tremendous cheering that the locomotive “Rocket” set out on the opening run.
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The World'S First Most Successful Locomotive.
(Photo, by courtesy of the Science Museum, London.)
George Stephenson's historic “Locomotion No. 1,” the efficiency of which was demonstrated at the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825.