In
1813 George Stephenson became aware
of attempts by William Hedley and Timothy
Hackworth, at Wylam Colliery, to develop
a locomotive. Stephenson successfully convinced the owners of Killingworth
Colliery to allow him to try to produce a steam-powered machine. By
1814 he had constructed a locomotive that could
pull thirty tons up a hill at 4 mph (6.5 kpm). Stephenson called his
locomotive, The Blutcher
(the name of a general in the Prussian Army, who had just helped Britain
to defeat Napoleon).
Stephenson's locomotive, with its two vertical cylinders let into
the boiler, from the pistons of which rods drove the gears, was very
similar to those produced at the time by John
Blenkinsop, William Hedley and Timothy
Hackworth. Where the Blutcher differed from these other
locomotives was that the gears did not drive the rack pinions but
the flanged wheels. Stephenson's machine was therefore the first successful
flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive. Stephenson continued to try and
improve his locomotive and in 1815 he changed the design so that the
connecting rods drove the wheels directly. These wheels were coupled
together by a chain.
Over the next few years, The Blutcher was constantly being
improved by Stephenson. In an attempt to try and get up more power
and to lessen the noise of the escaping steam Stephenson turned the
exhaust into the chimney and produced what became known as the blast
pipe.
The owners of the colliery were impressed with Stephenson's achievements
and in 1819 he was given the task of building a eight mile railroad
from the newly opened colliery at Hetton-le-Hole to the River Wear
at Sunderland. When this railroad was opened in 1822, Stephenson's
Blutcher was kept very busy.
Stephenson also used the Blutcher to convince Edward
Pearse the major shareholder of the Stockton & Darlington
company to build a locomotive, rather than a horse railway. Stephenson
told Pease that "a horse on an iron road would draw ten tons
for one ton on a common road". Stephenson added that the Blutcher
locomotive that he had built at Killingworth was "worth fifty
horses". That summer Edward Pease took
up Stephenson's invitation to visit Killingworth Colliery. When Pease
saw The Blutcher at work he realised George
Stephenson was right and offered him the post as the chief engineer
of the Stockton & Darlington company.
The Blutcher
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