Richard Trevithick: to get round Watt’s patent Trevithick began to build his own engines. This was his greatest achievement: the Puffing Devil. All eight horse-power of it. And unlike Boulton & Watt’s engine it moved. Trevithick’s genius was he built high-pressure steam-engines. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010
In Darlington in 2008 a team of enthusiasts is building the first brand-new British steam locomotive from scratch in nearly fifty years. It’s a multi-million pound endeavour that started nearly twenty years ago. Time Shift: The Last Days of Steam BBC 2011
It’s theatrical. It’s dirty. Noisy. Powerful. It’s heavy metal in motion. ibid.
Over two and a half thousand brand-new locomotives between 1948 and 1960. ibid.
The railways may not have been Britain’s top priority. ibid.
A wonderful but complicated heritage that could do with a bit of sorting out. ibid. early film
The four great railway companies were brought together into one single new organisation: British Railways. ibid.
Officially the Great Western Railway is dead. And to many undoubtedly the late lamented. ibid. early film
The question of steam’s continuing place on our railways had to be addressed. ibid.
Electrification required miles and miles of costly overhead lines; diesel power was more straightforward. ibid.
This great variety of locomotives running on the lines gave rise to a cultural phenomenon that celebrated this diversity ... The weird and wonderful engines running on Britain’s railways. ibid.
Engine classes, numbers and dimensions ... The trainspotter craze took off. ibid.
‘That thing has got a voice up the front there, it’s making a noise, it’s speaking, the terrific noise it makes ... It sings like a kettle.’ ibid. trainspotter
British Railways ceased to be a profitable company. ibid.
The passing of steam was happening. Even the railway enthusiast could see that the Age of Steam could not carry on. ibid.
Steam was dirty, noisy and impractical; new diesels were clean, safe and quiet. ibid.
The modernisation plan had promised an end to steam-powered locomotives. But steam-engines carried on being built for several years. ibid.
Others were racing against the clock to preserve Steam’s heritage. ibid.
The Beeching Report of 1963 advocated the closure of money-losing regional lines. ibid.
Luxury Pulmans provide one of the answers ... It’s already been called The Expense Account Train ... It cocks a snook at the MI. ibid. black and white film
As the engines went jobs were removed too. ibid.
Over one hundred separate heritage railways. ibid.
The public are still in love with steam. ibid.
One of the biggest success stories in railway preservation is the Great Western society based at Didcot, and started by the Southall Boys. ibid.
Buried deep within this ship is a piece of technology that’s transformed the modern world … the diesel engine … No other engine is so versatile or used in so many applications. The vast majority of the world’s commercial, industrial, agricultural, mining and military vehicles are powered by diesel. Timeshift: The Engine that Powers the World, BBC 2018
The unsung workhorse of the modern world. ibid.
The diesel was patented in Germany in 1892. It was one of several new engines being developed in the late nineteenth century to replaced the ageing steam engine. ibid.
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk, fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly. Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen 1938
We depend on engineers for new constructions to provide us with safe shelter, safe transportation and safe power. Professor Henry Petroski, Horizon: To Engineer is Human, BBC 1987
So successful was the Gothic style that its trappings have outlived their engineering need. ibid.
The challenge to engineering is to anticipate the fatal detail and to correct it in the design stage. Robert Stephenson had to face up to that kind of worry in the middle of the nineteenth century. ibid.
The phenomenon of progressive cracking leading to total failure is known as fatigue. And it’s a particularly sticky problem for engineers to deal with. ibid.
There is so much variability in the strength of materials that it is impossible for us to predict exactly how many bends the next paper clip out of the box will take. Or for that matter when concrete might eventually break in a test. ibid.
And all this was designed to be dismantled when the Great Exhibition closed so Hyde Park could be restored to its original state. ibid.
There are plenty of other examples of innovative designs that have succeeded to become symbols of engineering excellence. The first iron bridge still stands in the valley that cradled the industrial revolution. ibid.