LYCOS RETRIEVER 
George Stephenson
built 288 days ago
After ten months' labor, George Stephenson's locomotive "Blucher" was completed and tested on the Cillingwood Railway on July 25, 1814. The track was an uphill trek of four hundred and fifty feet. George Stephenson's engine hauled eight loaded coal wagons weighing thirty tons, at about four miles an hour. This was the first steam engined powered locomotive to run on a railroad and it was the most successful working steam engine that had ever been constructed up to this period, this encouraged the inventor make further experiments. In all, Stephenson built sixteen different engines.
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Designed and built by George Stephenson of the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1829, the Rocket was the winner in the Rainhill trials—a competition sponsored by the railway to obtain a locomotive for carrying both passengers and freight. It pulled a load of three times its own weight at the rate of 20 km/hr (12.5 mph) and hauled a coach filled with passengers at 39 km/hr (24 mph). When the road opened in 1831, it employed eight of Stephenson's locomotives.
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George Stephenson had two children: Robert and Fanny. Robert was born in 1803 and married Frances Sanderson in 1829. Robert died in 1859 having no children. Fanny was born in 1805 but died within weeks of her birth.
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Working at a colliery, George Stephenson was fully aware of the large number of accidents caused by explosive gases. In his spare time Stephenson began work on a safety lamp for miners. By 1815 he had developed a lamp that did not cause explosions even in parts of the pit that were full of inflammable gases. Unknown to Stephenson, Humphry Davy was busy producing his own safety lamp. In 1813 Stephenson became aware of attempts by William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth, at Wylam Colliery, to develop a locomotive. Stephenson successfully convinced his colliery manager, Nicholas Wood, to allow him to try to produce a steam-powered machine.
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Before the completion of the railway, George Stephenson had taken part in a great contest for the best locomotive at Liverpool, a prize of L500 having been offered by the company to the successful competitor. Stephenson sent in his improved model, the Rocket, constructed after plans of his own and his son Robert's, and it gained the prize against all its rivals, travelling at what was then considered the incredible rate of 35 miles an hour. It was ... satisfactorily settled that the locomotive was the best power for drawing carriages on railways, and George Stephenson's long battle was thus at last practically won. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway was an era in the history of the world. From the moment that great undertaking was complete, there could no longer be any doubt about the utility and desirability of railways, and all opposition died away almost at once. New lines began immediately to be laid out, and in an incredibly short time the face of England was scarred by the main trunks in that network of iron roads with which its whole surface is now so closely covered.
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George Stephenson, the son of a colliery fireman, was born at Wylam, eight miles from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on 9th June, 1781. The cottage where the Stephenson family lived was next to the Wylam Wagonway, and George grew up with a keen interest in machines. George's first employment was herding cows but when he was fourteen he joined his father at the Dewley Colliery. George was an ambitious boy and at the age of eighteen he began attending evening classes where he learnt to read and write. In 1802 Stephenson became a colliery engineman and later that year he married Frances Henderson, a servant at a local farm. To earn extra money, in the evenings, he repaired clocks and watches.
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George Stephenson