>Also the first to cause a fatality, at the railway's opening ceremony!
Yes, I did know that, but didn't want to get too involved in expanding on
Vasile's post.
{Quote hidden}>> Was an entry in the trials for a
>> contract to supply a locomotive for the Stockton-Darlington Railway,
>>the first public railway in the world.
>
>Yes, the Rainhill trials. They staged a reenactment a couple of years
>ago and showed it on television. They found that the fact that they
>both broke down wasn't what gave it to rocket - the other two finalists
>never really stood a chance. One (Novelty) because its design was just
>impractical to operate (vertical boiler fed from the top) and the other
>(Sans Pareil) because its large combined firebox/boiler tubes didn't
>work as well as Rocket's seperate firebox and multiple small tubes, a
>design that was used right to the end of steam locomotive development.
I did see that program, and thought they did a pretty fair and unbiased
evaluation of the different designs. So the success of Rocket was not due to
industrial espionage as some of the other competitors thought (Stephenson's
factory made some parts for some of the competing entries).
Jack Smith wrote
>Is the one at the Science Museum in London a replica?
>I thought it had the original.
My understanding is that the original is at York, and so that would be a
replica.
