At the beginning of the nineteenth century steam engines were on the move. But they were unreliable, dangerous and smashed the rails they ran on. Steam was out of control. Mark Williams on the Rails s1e2: Rocketmen
George Stephenson is remembered as the Father of the Railways. After all, his son Robert designed Rocket, the most famous steam locomotive ever built. ibid.
It was in 1801 that the genius Cornish steam engineer Richard Trevithick made the quantum leap from this – a massive engine used to haul oar out of mines – to this – the world’s first self-propelled engine. His road locomotive. And just two years later Trevithick was experimenting with steam-engines on rails. ibid.
Coal mines were using steam engines to bring men and coal to the surface. The pits were the place to become a steam engineer. ibid.
Wrought iron made for much stronger lighter rails. ibid.
Like many of his contemporaries George Stephenson was a semi-literate self-made man. But that was no reflection on his engineering ability or his ambition. And his next project was huge – an intercity line – the first – between Liverpool and Manchester. ibid.
In the early 1800s Britain was building its first steam-hauled railways. And it wasn’t long before people wanted to ride on the trains. Mark Williams on the Rails s1e5: Carriage Kings
Railway in Switzerland was the steepest highest railway ever constructed. ibid.
George Pullman was one of the first creators of luxury travel. His carriages were comfortable, robust and he went to town on the interiors. ibid.
The first Orient Express journey set out from Paris to the east in 1883. ibid.
Thousands of families were forcibly displaced by the building of the lines and termini. Mark Williams on the Rails s1e10: Going Underground
There was just one place to go – London was going to have to go underground. ibid.
Twenty years after he [Pearson] first suggested the idea, work on an underground railway began. ibid.
By 1905 all the steam lines had been converted to electricity. ibid.
Midnight on December 31st 1947: every steam locomotive in Britain sounded their whistle ... The most radical shake-up Britain’s railways had ever seen: nationalisation. Mark Williams on the Rails: Diesel Generation
Steam was seen as dirty, inefficient and even worse than that – old fashioned. The last steam loco to be built for British Rail was a 9F ... Evening Star. ibid.
A hundred and fifty years of steam had come to an end – the new diesel era was dawning. ibid.
The Class 31 diesel electric marked a huge turning point: more efficiency meant fewer jobs. In the twenty years after its introduction 400,000 railwaymen were laid off. ibid.
Steam power had finally arrived in the textile industry. And this is what the boilers are generating steam for: it’s a tandem – because there are two cylinders one in front of the other like a bike – compound – because the steam is used more than once – condensing – because downstairs is James Watt’s separate condenser – creating a partial vacuum in this the big cylinder – steam engine! It develops five hundred horsepower. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e4: Pennine Passage
Because this is what it’s driving – three hundred power-looms. You can get an idea of how loud it is, but you can’t feel the concrete floor vibrating ... Now everything is powered by steam. ibid.
And it was local [Birmingham] traders who took the initiative. In 1769 they commissioned James Brindley to build a canal connecting the local coal mines to the canal. The price of coal halved, cutting costs in the metal workshops. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e6: Coining It
Matthew Boulton, the great entrepreneur ... It was his collaboration with James Watt, the father of the steam engine, that really put Birmingham on the map ... In thirty years they dispatched over five hundred steam engines via the canal network to mines and factories all around Britain. ibid.
Boulton was always quick to spot an opportunity. In the 1790s rapid inflation created a national demand for coinage, so he set up another production line using steam power to revolutionise coin making – a trade still carried on in the city [Birmingham] today. ibid.
From the 1770s the steam engine market was dominated by the partnership of Boulton & Watt. They had made some improvements in efficiency but their engines, using massive copper boilers like giant kettles, had serious limitations. To get more power they had to build bigger and bigger machines. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e8: The Iron Horse
Richard Trevithick, a mining engineer with a passion for steam, was dreaming of small powerful engines – powerful enough to do a range of jobs and small enough to move themselves around. High pressure locomotion. This was the way of the future. The technology of the steam railways. ibid.
This is a replica of that secret locomotive. This is the first locomotive in the world: built by Trevithick over the winter of 1802, it’s a living dinosaur in the nicest possible sense. And we’re talking ten years before George Stephenson’s first attempts hit the tracks. ibid.
The truth is that the original steam locomotive was born out of a mix of Cornish genius and hard-nosed industrial competition. ibid.
At full capacity the engines of the Kew Bridge Station were capable of pumping thirty million gallons ... a day ... It’s a cathedral to steam. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e10: Power Crazy
Steam engines: the horse’s nemesis. They’d existed for decades before anyone tried to put them to work on the farm. Most farming jobs required them to be taken out into the fields. These were the earliest agricultural steam engines: portable engines. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e1: Bread and Beer
Steamrollers were the first self-propelled self-steered steam engines. ibid.
This is a replica of Murdoch’s model. A top-secret design for a vehicle that could pull carriages along the road ... Murdoch continued developing his model vehicle throughout the 1780s ... He was fascinated by high-pressure steam. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e3: Gas on Wheels
This time extracting gas from coal ... He soon became so successful that he lit his own house. The first house lit by gas in the world. And Murdoch’s employers soon turned gas-light into big business. From 1805 mills and factories were to work shifts around the clock using their own gas generating plants. It wasn’t long before everyone wanted the new light. ibid.
One of the most extraordinary pieces of machinery in the entire industrial age in my opinion – this is a Scrubber. The idea in our computer-dominated nano-technology world that the way to remove ammonia from gas is to scrub it with brushes underwater seems fantastic. But that’s what the machine does: gas is bubbled through water and scrubbed by slowly revolving brushes, and this is how town gas was cleaned throughout the whole of its life as a fuel supply. ibid.
200 years later Murdoch’s coal gas was readily available. It could be fed into an engine and ignited again and again and again. ibid.
Fifty years after William Murdoch first dreamed of steam on the roads another visionary, Walter Hancock, made it happen. ibid.
Konig’s genius was to imagine that perhaps steam power could drive a printing press. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s3e3: The European Story: Hot Metal
Britain built the first steam locomotive to deliver coal from its mines. They would have stayed purely as industrial machines if it hadn’t been for Robert Stephenson. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e4: The Impossible Railway
This is the cutting made for Stephenson’s railway. At three and a half kilometres long and twelve metres deep it took forty barrel runs to take away the earth. At times 20,000 navvies were employed to build the line to Birmingham. ibid.
Perrier bought a water engine for the project, and when the Paris Water Works was completed it worked perfectly. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e8: Steam on the Water
In 1775 Perrier launched the very first steam-powered boat on the River Seine in Paris. ibid.
Once paddle-steamers had proved to be a commercial success in the United States they quickly spread across Europe. ibid.
In 1829 John Ericsson built a steam locomotive called Novelty. ibid.
Ericsson had developed a shortened version of the Archimedes’ Screw that would propel boats. ibid.
As well as being labour-intensive the major problem with steam engines was they made such inefficient use of coal ships which couldn’t carry enough for long journeys. ibid.
The United States showed great interest in Ericsson’s ship ... Jon Ericsson went on to make his fortune in the United States building revolutionary iron-clad warships, designing guns and advancing development of the steam engine. ibid.
By the 1760s they could use a Spinning Jenny: a glorified spinning wheel with several spindles: but even it couldn’t keep up with demand. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: Europe 4e4: Cotton, Linen and Rope
Arkwright built a series of mills across the north of England. This is Cromford: the first. His appetite for cotton was insatiable. ibid.
When steam-power really got going as a moving force it wasn’t on the roads, it was on the railways. By the 1860s locomotives were criss-crossing Europe, but on the roads self-powered vehicles were in for a bumpy ride especially in England. Ronald Top, More Industrial Revelations: Europe s4e6: Exploding Engines