John
Blenkinsop
was the manager of Middleton Colliery. Blenkinsop wanted to find a
way of reducing the cost of transporting coal to the nearby town of
Leeds. In 1811 Blenkinsop joined forces with Matthew
Murray,
an engineer from Leeds to produce a locomotive
for the colliery.
Blenkinsop wanted a locomotive that could be used to transport coal
from
Middleton Colliery to Leeds. Blenkinsop
and Murray rejected the idea that a steam locomotive with smooth wheels
on a smooth rail would have sufficient adhesion to propel itself and
a load. They therefore experimented with producing a rack
railway.
The Salamanca
(named after a battle in the Peninsular War) locomotive, with its
cog-toothed driving wheels, first appeared in public on 24th June,
1812. The locomotive had two vertical cylinders within the top of
the boiler, and the pistons drove the rack wheels through rods and
pinions. The locomotive weighed 5 tons and on a level track was capable
of hauling a load of 90 tons at 4 mph. Blenkinsop's locomotive was
a great success and with Murray's help he produced three more. A local
artist, George Walker, produced the first
ever painting of a locomotive when he visited Middleton Colliery in
1814.
The Blenkinsop locomotives were fairly expensive to use and heavy
wear took place between the driving gear wheel and the horizontal
rack. Despite these problems, the four Blenkinsop locomotives were
used at Middleton Colliery until the mid 1830s.
George Walker, Middleton
Colliery (1814)
(1)
Samuel Smiles, Life of George Stephenson
(1875)
Mr
Blenkinsop of Leeds took out a patent for a racked or tooth-rail laid
along one side of the road, into which the toothed-wheel of his locomotive
worked as pinions work into a rack. The engine had two cylinders,
instead of one as in Trevithick's engine. The invention of the double
cylinder was due to Matthew Murray of Leeds, one of the best mechanical
engineers of his time.
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