Where were the first railroads?

Answer 1

1804 by the English inventor Richard Trevithick.

Born:

1771

Died:

1833

Place of Birth:

Cornwall

Famous For:

Steam engineer and pioneer of the railways

Biography:

Learning his craft in the tin mines of Cornwall, Trevithick went to Merthyr Tydfil and paved the way for the railway age by building the first steam engine to pull a load on rails.

Richard Trevithick was born in Carn Brea between Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall, and grew up amongst the tin mines where his father worked with pumping engines.

A huge man, who could throw a huge sledgehammer over an engine house, Trevithick was also a man of vision dismissed as foolish for attempting the impossible.

Creator of the high pressure steam engine, his reputation as a brilliant inventor reached Merthyr Tydfil.

Samuel Homfray, master of Penydarren ironworks, obtained a share in Trevithick's patent and asked him to build a stationary engine.

At that time, the late eighteenth century, horse-drawn railways were used to carry coal and iron from mines in the South Wales Valleys and other industrial centres.

But Trevithick recognised that a steam engine on wheels - a locomotive - would be more effective than horses at pulling heavy loads.

A rival ironmaster - believed to be Richard Crawshay - dismissed the idea as preposterous.

But Homfrey had faith in Trevithick and bet his rival 500 guineas - a fortune in those days - that the engine would successfully pull a ten ton load of iron along a nine-and-a-half mile stretch of tramroad from Penydarren to Abercynon.

On 21 February 1804 history was made when Trevithick's locomotive "Penydarren" (replica pictured above) completed the journey in four hours and five minutes.

In fact, the load was much heavier than planned, up to 25 tons including the weight of the engine itself, the wagons, and around 70 people perched on them.

Despite his pioneering work with locomotives, Trevithick soon returned to his original job building stationary steam engines for water pumping.

He had no interest in fame and fortune except as a means of funding further experiments, and left the development of the railways to others such as George Stephenson

Answer 2

London Metropolitan Railway, forerunner of the underground railways, and later served as an engineer in the development of the London subway system. In 1860 he designed the Pimlico Rail Bridge, the first rail bridge over the Thames within the metropolis of London.

Answer 3

The location of where the first bridge was created is not known. Natives and ancient civilizations used small bridges in their cities and homelands.