I have posted in the past about the first steam locomotive developed about a half a decade earlier, but as was the case with rapid invention and industrialization inventors and engineers were racing with competing designs to develop the best and brightest. Puffing Billy is the world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive that can still be seen on display at the Science Museum.
Built for use at the Wylam Colliery in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, its sturdy design and novel features, including vertical cylinders along the boiler, a single crankshaft, and heavy plates. It had to be refitted with four wheels and a lighter design to stop breaking tracks. Although operated expressly for the colliery, hauling coal until its retirement in 1862, its design and the fact that it didn’t blow up helped spur on work on safer train models (Lamb, 2003).
Railway and Locomotive Engineering (1903)
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