HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT ANTIQUES OR COLLECTIBLES?

Send me an E-mail
(Please, no questions
 about value.)

Instructions for sending photographs of your pieces with your question.
 

Which department store originated the concept of selling artistic home furnishings?

Macy's
Harrod's
Liberty & Co.
                     To see the answer

Arts & Crafts:
From William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright

by Arnold Schwartzman

The author focuses on a British craftsmen, such as William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who turned their backs on the mass production of the Industrial Revolution to form a ‘Round Table’ in order to establish a means of returning to hand-crafted products.

                                  More Books

 WATCH VIDEOS

How Was It Made? Block Printing William Morris Wallpaper

This video recreates the painstaking reproduction of a William Morris wallpaper design from 1875, a process that can take up to 4 weeks, using 30 different blocks and 15 separate colors.

Click on the title to view.

And look for other videos in selected articles.

Have Bob speak
 on antiques to your group or organization.

More Information

Can't find what
 you're looking for?

Go to our Sitemap

Find out what's coming in the
2024 Spring Edition

of the
THE ANTIQUES ALMANAC

"Art Deco World"

COMING IN
May

Share pages of this ezine with your friends using the buttons provided with each article.


Download our
Decorative Periods and Styles Chart
 

Read our newest glossary:

Antique Furniture Terminology
 from A to Z

courtesy of AntiquesWorldUK

Videos have
come to


The Antiques
Almanac

Expand your antiques experience.

Look for videos in various articles.

Just click on the
arrow to play.

FEATURED
ANTIQUE




Argyle Chair
Charles Rennie Macintosh

Off Like a Rocket
by Bob Brooke

 

First came the steam engine, itself. Then came the steam locomotive. Both in their own way changed the course of history.



On the warm morning of August 27, 1831, a throng of people flocked to Lydius Street in Albany, New York. They had come to see the new railroad train. The odd-looking engine, the "De Witt Clinton," stood in front of a tender containing water and fuel, followed by three passenger cars, made from the bodies of stagecoaches fastened on special railroad wheels and several flat cars to hold luggage.

Local hotels had sold tickets to ride the train. As passengers climbed into the carriages and took their seats, a conductor, standing on a platform outside each coach, collected the tickets, then climbed to a seat on the tender and blew a horn. The engine gave a great jerk, and the crowd cheered. All along the 17 miles to Schenectady, New York, farmers and their families gathered to see this new spectacle and wave to the passengers.

According to an eye-witness account published in the Albany Argus on August 27, 1831, “The engine performed the entire route in less than one hour, including stoppages, and on a part of the road its speed was at the rate of thirty miles an hour." The train made the return journey from Schenectady to Albany in 38 minutes, much to the delight of its promoter.”

But the story of the steam locomotive, indeed that of the railroad, didn’t begin in Albany. Instead, it began three decades earlier and 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in northeastern England.

The First Locomotive
The first successful steam locomotive was Cornishman Richard Trevithick’s 1804 creation, which ran on an iron plateway in South Wales. On 21 February 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. But nothing much came of Trevithick’s invention because his engines were too heavy for the cast-iron plateway track then in use.

However, it was northeastern England where lines built of wood and iron, of rails or L-shaped plates, linking mines with wharves, gradually evolved to a point where steam traction became not only practical but preferred.

These early primitive railways served the English coal mines, pulling 150 tons of ore at 3 miles per hour. One of the early enthusiasts was George Stephenson, an enginewright from the Killingsworth Colliery.

In 1814, George Stephenson, inspired by the early locomotives of Trevithick, Murray and Hedley, persuaded the manager of the Killingworth Colliery where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. Stephenson played a pivotal role in the development and widespread adoption of the steam locomotive. His designs considerably improved on the work of the earlier pioneers.

Stephenson built the locomotive Blücher, also a successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive that could pull 50 tons of ore at 3 miles per hour, replacing 20 horses. He also surveyed and constructed the line. The colliery management decided to build a 25-mile line from the river at Stockton to the colliery at Darlington. And thus the first railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was born. Though it began with coal, it eventually carried a variety of freight and passengers on regularly scheduled service.

Stephenson used fish-bellied rails—deeper in the center than at the ends—which sat on cast-iron “chairs” pinned to wooden blocks cut from the oak timbers of warships left over at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.



Stephenson and his son Robert built the first powerful steam locomotive, Locomotion No 1, at Newcastle. It hauled the inaugural train carrying 90 tons of coal at 15 miles per hour on September 27, 1825, carrying over 500 passengers, 200 more than had been expected. The train had only two breakdowns along the way and only one casualty when a brakeman’s leg had to be amputated en route.

His firm, Robert Stephenson and Company, soon developed a thriving locomotive building business. The company built the Stourbridge Lion, the first full-scale locomotive to operate on a United States railroad, what became the Delaware and Hudson R.R.



Meanwhile, Stephenson had been appointed consulting engineer to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway whose directors couldn’t decide whether to use locomotive or cable traction. Those in favor of the former suggested a competition. The competition, known as the Rainhill Trials, occurred in 1829.There were three competitors— Stephenson entered the Rocket, one of his successful models with the connecting rods removed. The Rocket had an ingenious system for generating steam—a multi-tubular boiler. Instead of passing the smoke and hot gas from the fire through a wide flue and up the chimney, Stephenson provided 25 3-inch copper tubes leading from the firebox, through the waterspace of the boiler and then up the chimney. The innovation raised more steam for the same amount of coal. He and his designer of tube pressurized boiler received prize for 1st place, and soon their locomotives started appearing all across England.

Because the other two competitors just weren’t powerful enough or had manufacturing defects, so the Rocket won, hauling 13 tons of ore at 29 miles per hour.

Over the years steam locomotives evolved significantly. They were equipped with cow catchers for better moving through turns and for protection from wandering animals on railway tracks. Passenger travel became popular, necessitating the construction of both short and long lines with all the necessary luxuries. Engines received update to four cylinders and geared wheels for industrial use.



The first public railway which used only steam locomotives, all the time, was Liverpool and Manchester Railway, built in 1830.

Passengers quickly took to the train in the following weeks, attracted by the fact that the journey took just a couple of hours, less than half the time it took in a stagecoach. Previous lines had been open to fee-paying passengers, but within a short period the Liverpool & Manchester Railway was primarily a passenger service – and the first to rely solely on steam locomotion.

For the first time a double-tracked, steam-powered railway hauled passengers and goods between two major cities. As the world awoke to read reports of this pioneering achievement in the north-west of England, the railway age was born.

The Steam Locomotive Comes to America
In 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. company granted a charter for transporting both passengers and freight. However, the company struggled to produce a steam engine capable of traveling over rough and uneven terrain, instead relying on horse-drawn trains. Enter industrialist Peter Cooper: Cooper, who not coincidentally owned extensive land holdings over the proposed route of the railroad (the value of which would grow dramatically if the railroad succeeded), offered to design and build just such an engine. On August 28, 1830, Cooper’s engine, which he called the “Tom Thumb,” was undergoing testing on B&O tracks near Baltimore when a horse-drawn train pulled up alongside it and challenged Cooper (and “Tom Thumb”) to a race. Cooper accepted, and the race was on. The steam engine quickly roared into the lead, but when a belt broke loose it was forced to retire, and the horse crossed the finish line first. However, B&O executives, impressed with the massive power and speed Cooper’s engine had proven capable of, made the decision to convert their fledgling railroad to steam. And as a result, the B&O became one of the most successful railways in the United States.

WATCH A VIDEO:  The First Locomotive

< Back to More Back in Time                                            Next Articles >

FOLLOW MY WEEKLY BLOG
Antiques Q&A


JOIN MY COLLECTION
Antiques and More on
Facebook

LIKE MY FACEBOOK PAGE
The Antiques Almanac on Facebook

No antiques or collectibles
are sold on this site.

How to Recognize and Refinish Antiques for Pleasure and Profit

Book: How to Recognizing and Refinishing Antiques for Pleasure and Profit
Have you ever bought an antique or collectible that was less than perfect and needed some TLC? Bob's new book offers tips and step-by- step instructions for simple maintenance and restoration of common antiques.

Read an Excerpt

Auction News
Get up to the minute news of antiques auctions around the country and the world.

Also see
The Auction Directory

Antiques News
Read breaking news stories from the world of antiques and collectibles.

Art Exhibitions
Search for art exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world.

Home | About This Site | Antiques | Collectibles | Antique Tips | Book Shop | Antique Trivia | Antique Spotlight | Antiques News  Special Features | Caring for Your Collections | Collecting | Readers Ask | Antiques Glossaries | Resources | Contact
Copyright ©2007-2023 by Bob Brooke Communications
Site design and development by BBC Web Services