By Anthony Dawson. The Rainhill Trials will forever be remembered as the first public demonstration of the potential of the railway, where Stephenson’s `Rocket’ prevailed over several challengers to become arguably the most famous steam locomotive in history.
But in truth, Rainhill was of much greater significance, not just for the railway. It was one of the largest public science displays of the early nineteenth century; it is estimated that some 10,000 people flocked to see the `trial of locomotive carriages’. Many of the great and aspiring railway engineers of the day participated in some shape or form.
Rainhill Men: Railway Pioneers looks at the lives of some of those early engineers and reveals the direction their lives and careers took after Rainhill. It includes George and Robert Stephenson before moving on to look at other well-known and less-well-known names from the time.
Henry Booth (who designed Rocket’s boiler) was the world’s first railway manager and was instrumental in the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time. Timothy Hackworth, the Methodist engine-wright from Shildon, established his own engineering firm, which built one of the first locomotives to run in Russia. Although his locomotive Novelty was a failure, John Ericsson found fame as the designer of the USS Monitor.
This book explores the social history of the Rainhill Trials and reveals who these engineers were and the times they lived and worked in. 96 pages. Illustrated in colour and black & white.