The Rainhill Trials
When the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was nearing completion, its directors had still not decided how the trains would be pulled. Some favoured stationary steam engines hauling the wagons by rope. Others wanted locomotives. In 1829 they offered a prize of £500 for a locomotive that could meet a set of conditions, and invited makers to prove it at Rainhill, on a level stretch of the line.
The rules were strict. An engine weighing six tons had to draw twenty tons at an average of at least ten miles an hour, over a total distance equivalent to the whole journey between the two towns, and do so without breaking down. Five entries ran in the second week of October.
Rocket
The winner was Rocket, built by Robert Stephenson with his father George and the engineer Henry Booth. Its boiler held a bundle of copper tubes through which the hot gases passed, which raised steam far faster than a plain flue, and the exhaust was directed up the chimney to draw the fire. Rocket reached about thirty miles an hour on its own and kept to the rules over the whole trial. Its rivals suffered failures: Novelty was fast but its boiler gave trouble, and Sans Pareil was overweight and burst a cylinder.
The line opened in September 1830. It was the first intercity railway run entirely by steam locomotives to a timetable, and carried both passengers and goods. On its opening day it also saw the first railway death to attract wide attention, that of the politician William Huskisson, who was struck by Rocket while crossing the track.