The Oldest Steam Locomotives in the World

today's video is sponsored by incog of whom more in a bit in the science museum in London and the national museum of Scotland in Edinburgh you can see a pair of very similar but very unusual machines a pair of steam locomotives known as puffing Billy and WM Dilly these are respectively the oldest and second oldest steam locomotives in the world now I should emphasize they aren't the first Railway locomotives ever built the first engine ever built or at least the first one that worked was Richard travic Penny Daren locomotive of 1804 but it didn't survive puffing Billy dates from about a decade later having been built between 1813 and 1814 WM Dilly followed in we think 1815 records for that era tend to be patchy and a lot of information has had to be reconstructed by archaeologists and historians after the fact actually there has been some dispute over which engine came first and indeed which one was puffing Billy and which one was WM Dilly but I'll get onto that later so now we've settled which one was which let's look into how and why they were built they were the work of William Hedley now Headley is quite an interesting figure Engineers like Timothy hackworth and George Steven son who both have their own associations with these engines were dedicated to the advancement of the technology Hedley seems to have just been interested in saving money he was born in 1779 in Newburn a village on the time to the west of Newcastle like many Lads in the northeast of England he went into the coal mines being a smart lad he trained as a Coler viewer or manager as we would say now he proved very talented bringing Innovations to his Minds that made them highly profitable in 1805 he was head hunted by Christopher blackett the owner of WM colory at wum they had a problem the coal had to get from the cery to the barges on the river by means of a wagon way or primitive Railway this was achieved using horses which could haul one or at most two wagons at a time and needed a man to lead them at this time the Napoleonic wars were in full swing fodder for horses was expensive and labor was hard to come by blacket had heard of Richard trevi's new invention and commissioned a locomotive to the same design which was completed in 1805 and built by Thomas Waters it never made it to WM why is unclear but it seems likely that the engine would have been too heavy for the wooden rails of the wagonway the same problem would scaer travic original engine blacket had the wagonway relayed with iron rails and approached travic again but by this time travic had become bored with steam locomotives and moved on to other projects meanwhile elsewhere in Britain other inventors had also seen the potential of the locomotive and a strange belief had Arisen namely that a steam locomotive that operated with smooth wheels on smooth rails could not haul anything more than its own weight even though travic had repeatedly demonstrated that it was perfectly possible for such an engine to haul a load a number of solutions were suggested to this non-existent problem William Chapman came up with a locomotive fitted with a winding drum that could haul itself along a chain fitted in the middle of the track John blankin sop invented the rack locomotive which was equipped with a cog wheel that would engage with a rack rail alongside the track this would later find success on Railways that climbed mountains and then there's my personal favorite William brunton's mechanical traveler or steam horse which was fitted with legs to push the engine along blankin sop and locomotive designer Matthew Murray's system was the most successful but it was expensive and remember Hedley was all about the money he unlike Chapman Brunton blankin soop and Murray didn't see anything wrong with trevi's way of doing things when blackit again got a bee in his bonnet about locomotives Headley decided to experiment if you want a smooth experience online you do well to check out this video's sponsoring cogy if 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100 people to click the link in the description below and sign up using the code Hazard get a remarkable 60% off and you can stay on track with a safer more secure browsing experience speaking of staying on track I wonder what Headley is up to in order to test his hypothesis Headley came up with a sort of human-powered locomotive a trolley that could be cranked along the rails by four men this demonstrated that yes smooth wheels on smooth rails could absolutely be used to haul heavy loads emboldened by this Headley brought Thomas Waters in to fit his trolley with a boiler and gears and convert it into a locomotive the resulting machine was a very poor steamer and only made it through its test steaming after Waters deliberately shut the safety valve but it proved able to haul up to five wagons on subsequent tests it was good enough for blacket to authorize Hedley to go back to the drawing board so Headley patented his own locomotive design in 1813 oddly enough his original design included spikes on the inside of the wheels that could stick into the ground between the rails to give the engine more more grip which raises questions about headley's faith in his own data anyway the finished engine didn't include this feature now the question arises of who was actually responsible for What on the locomotive Headley did not build the locomotive alone the engine right at the mine was Jonathan forer the head blacksmith was Timothy hackworth all three are known to have been involved in the construction of the locomotive though to what extent is unknown Hedley and his sons pushed the idea that it was basically all headley's work and we'll get onto their reasons for that later but Headley didn't make substantial developments Beyond his initial designs and hackworth would go on to be viewed as the greatest locomotive engineer of his day with several Innovations to his name and as to what part forer played or whether Waters was involved we just don't know regardless of who did what the locomotive was undoubtedly topof the line for the day it was powered by two cylinders with valve gear mounted above the boiler an idea borrowed from blankin soop and Murray the boiler itself was of RW iron boilers in those days could be rather wasteful things heat was provided by a single tube passing from the Firebox to the chimney so only a fraction of the energy generated actually went towards heating the water this boiler had a return flu I.E the tube doubled back on itself to provide twice the heating area meaning that the Firebox and the chimney were both at the same end and raising the question as to which end of the engine is the front and which is the back it had four wheels at least at first and these were coupled together to improve traction the engine which would become known as puffing Billy was probably completed early in 1814 but again we don't know for sure it proved a success Headley stated that it could regularly haul eight coal wagons other observers such as Matthew Nicholson who worked on the wagon way reckoned it was even better he claimed it could do the work of 10 horses which puts its load between 10 and 20 wagons you might say that it went like billio or not you see it has been claimed that puffing Billy was the origin of the phrase to go like billio I don't think this is true for one thing while the engine was strong it certainly wasn't fast it moved at about 4 to 5 mph with a load for another thing I doubt that anyone outside of WM cery and the early locomotive engineering scene would have been aware of it and for a third it doesn't appear to have been known as puffing Billy until much later according to Robert Young's admittedly somewhat dated book hackworth and the locomotive the engine was nicknamed the grasshopper or the Dilly so I think it's very unlikely that the term comes from headley's engine fun though the theory is sorry I feel like every time I talk talk about the origin of a word or phrase I just ruin everyone's fun regardless of whether it went like billio or not the engine was successful enough for a second engine to be built soon afterwards this engine would become known as WM Dilly although again it's not clear when or how official this name was it also seems that all of the locomotives used at WM cery were nicknamed WM dillies so I don't know what was special about this one nevertheless it did incorporate Improv M ments on the original design other engines would follow the success of the engines Drew attention from other Engineers indeed John forer brought a friend of his from Killingworth cery to see the engines at work that friend was George Stevenson and his observations would come to influence his first engine that would be constructed later in 1814 although the engines were stronger than a horse they weighed 8.3 tons and were therefore far heavy blackit wasn't at all happy at the prospect of having to relay his track again and so Headley rebuilt Billy and Dilly to run on eight wheels to better distribute the weight this happened sometime between 1815 and 1817 in 1822 WM Dilly found an unusual second purpose that year there was a strike by the Keelan on the river TI Keels was the name given to the coal barges that traveled between the keys and the ships and they formed a Link in the coal supply chain hedley's solution to the strike was to take the Dilly off its Wheels stick it in a Keel and convert it into a tugbo following this adventure it returned to the rails in 1827 Headley by now a wealthy businessman left WM cery while he would work with locomotives again his primary interest remained in the ownership and management of coal mines two years later though an event took place that would have a dramatic effect on hedley's reputation a railway was being built between Liverpool and Manchester unlike anything built before the first inter city Railway the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway held a competition at the Village of rainhill to find a locomotive worthy of their new line one of the competitors was Timothy hackworth with his engine s Pere hackworth had left WM ker in 1815 because as a strict Methodist he refused to work Sundays s peray was the runner up the indisputable winner was a locomotive called rocket built by none other than George Stevenson with his son Robert rocket was an incredibly Advanced machine compared to the lumbering puffing Billy and WM Dilly and would form the basis of every subsequent steam locomotive an unfortunate byproduct of this was that George Stevenson would come to be known as the father of the locomotive and would be identified as such by one Dr dionisis Ladner in a lecture in 1836 naturally Hedley was not going to take this lying down and wrote an Open Letter to Dr Ladner that was carried in every newspaper in Newcastle for 3 weeks in this he set his own role in the development of the locomotive out and though he did give credit to travic he makes it clear that he believed himself to be a better candidate for the title of father of the locomotive it seems that this did not have the desired effect as would become clear a couple of decades later in 1837 Hedley would pass his mining interests onto his sons and go into retirement he would pass away on the 9th of January 1843 in 1857 Dr Samuel Smiles published a biography of Stevenson this was as much an aspirational textbook as a historical account and it restated the claim that Stevenson was the father of the locomotive hedley's eldest son Oswald rushed to his father's defense with a book called who invented the locomotive engine that was published in 1858 even so the question of how much of an innovator Headley actually was has been much disputed over the two centuries since puffing Billy first took to the rails but what of the engines themselves well in 1830 the wagon way was relayed with stronger cast iron rails and the remaining engines of which there were probably three were re rebuilt back to their four-wheeled form they continued plooding along for three more decades by the 1860s the rail network of Britain was pretty well established and so it became cheaper and easier to transport coal from WM cery to Newcastle via the northeastern Railway in 1862 WM cery had two locomotives on a wagonway that was little used Captain blackett son of the original realized the importance of puffing Billy and loaned it to the patent Museum later the science museum it would be sold for 200 00 2 years later that left WM Dilly which had little enough work to do the mine meanwhile was having troubles of its own it was in financial trouble largely due to a major flood and in 1868 it closed down the equipment was put up for auction in 1869 and hedley's Sons bought WM Dilly for preservation in stark contrast to puffing Billy WM Dilly was sold for £610 Shillings or basically scrap value curiously the sale listing described the engine as puffing Billy While most people saw little value in this almost hilariously outdated locomotive the Headley had it restored and placed on display and in 1882 it was presented to the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh as you might imagine based on the various twists and turns of the story of these two engines there was some confusion about them Headley didn't identify his locomotives by name and they carry no numbers given that both were known at one point or another as puffing Billy and both were known as a WM Dilly it's no surprise that there was some dispute over which engine was the older an archaeological survey in 2008 settled the matter once and for all puffing Billy was the older engine and WM Dilly would have to settle for being the second oldest which is still pretty good the engines are remarkable survivors of the pioneering age of Railways but it took quite a while for them to be recognized as such the development of locomotives was a slow Evolution over three decades from the Primitive Penny Daren locomotive to the then Advanced rocket puffing Billy and WM Dilly are a vital Link in the line of descent well I hope you enjoyed today's video if you did please do leave a like and consider subscribing for more I would like to thank my donors on Kofi and patreon and here on YouTube for your support you are the the mechanical linkage to my four wheels thanks also to incog for sponsoring this video click on the link in the description below to take advantage of their offer and I'll see you all again very soon cheerio for

Channel: Jago Hazzard

Views: 110,703

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Id: 3BCaywklqBg

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023