Richard Trevithick & George Stephenson: a twenty firstcentury Reassessment

Two hundred years ago, a remarkable event took place in London. At the instigation of Richard Trevithick, engineer, polymath and inventor - who many regard as the greatest Cornishman ever - an elliptical circuit of cast iron rail was laid out on ground that was then on the northern edge of the City, close to today's Euston station. A wooden stockade was built around it, and from July to September Trevithick invited the public to enter at 1/-d a head to view and ride on a train of open wagons drawn by a steam locomotive. The engine was called Catch Me Who Can. When all went well, which was rare, it could travel up to 12 mph.

This enterprising project, Trevithick's brainchild, was designed to promote the benefit of railways for London and his own engines in particular. But it was not altogether a success. For one thing the crowds were smaller than expected - a shilling was a lot of money in those days. For another, the cast iron flanged rail was not fully capable of taking the weight of locomotive and train, and embarrassing breaks were encountered. And thirdly there was no early commercial spin-off. After all it was not until nearly three decades later in 1836 that London had its first proper railway, the first stage of the London & Greenwich; and sales of Trevithick locomotives were never brisk.

By 1836, stories of the amazing success of early railways in Wales and the North of England had finally penetrated metropolitan consciousness. There had been the first fare-paying passenger railway between Swansea &...