Rainhill Trials (1829): Stephenson's Rocket Wins the Race

The Rainhill Trials were a locomotive competition held between 6 and 14 October 1829 on a level stretch of the unfinished Liverpool and Manchester Railway at Rainhill, near Liverpool. They decided whether the world’s first inter-city railway would be worked by steam locomotives or by stationary engines and cables. The clear winner, George and Robert Stephenson’s Rocket, set the basic design of the steam locomotive for well over a century.

Background: a railway without a decision

By the late 1820s Liverpool’s merchants were frustrated with the canals and turnpike roads that linked their port to the cotton mills of Manchester, about 30 miles (50 km) inland. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company won its Act of Parliament in 1826 after a bitter fight with canal owners and landowners, and George Stephenson became its chief engineer. Work on cuttings, embankments and the crossing of the bog of Chat Moss went on for several years.

What the line would actually use for power was still undecided. Early colliery railways such as the Stockton and Darlington Railway used a mixture of horses, locomotives and rope haulage by stationary winding engines. Locomotives had a mixed reputation: since Richard Trevithick’s Penydarren engine of 1804 they had often proved slow, heavy and prone to breaking rails.

In early 1829 two respected engineers, James Walker and John Urpeth Rastrick, reported to the directors and leaned towards a system of fixed engines spaced along the line, hauling trains by cable. George Stephenson argued hard for locomotives. The directors, led by their treasurer Henry Booth, chose to settle the matter with a public trial and announced a prize of £500 in April 1829.

The conditions were demanding for the time. A locomotive had to consume its own smoke, a requirement aimed at avoiding nuisance to the public. It was to weigh no more than 6 tons when mounted on six wheels (less on four), and it had to haul a load of three times its own weight at 10 mph or more. Boiler pressure was limited to 50 pounds per square inch, the engine needed two safety valves, and its price was capped at £550.

The test itself imitated a working day. Each locomotive ran back and forth along a measured course of 1.5 miles, with an extra length at each end for starting and stopping, making about 35 miles in all, slightly more than the length of the finished line. After taking on fuel and water it then had to repeat the whole performance. Three judges oversaw the trials: Rastrick, the colliery engineer Nicholas Wood and the Manchester cotton spinner John Kennedy.

The competitors and key people

Five machines took part at Rainhill:

• Rocket, entered by George Stephenson, his son Robert and Henry Booth, and built at Robert Stephenson and Company’s works in Newcastle upon Tyne.
• Novelty, built in London by John Braithwaite and the Swedish engineer John Ericsson. Light and fast, it quickly became the crowd’s favourite.
• Sans Pareil, built by Timothy Hackworth, the locomotive superintendent of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
• Perseverance, entered by Timothy Burstall of Edinburgh, which was damaged on the way to Rainhill.
• Cycloped, entered by Thomas Shaw Brandreth, which was not a steam engine at all but a horse walking on a moving belt.

Large crowds came to watch, with estimates commonly ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 people on the opening day. Grandstands were put up, and newspapers across Britain followed the results closely.

George Stephenson (1781–1848), a self-taught engineer from Northumberland, built the line and championed locomotive power when many experts doubted it. Robert Stephenson (1803–1859), his son, ran the Newcastle works and was largely responsible for Rocket’s detailed design; he later became one of Britain’s leading civil engineers. Henry Booth (1788–1869), the company’s treasurer and secretary, proposed the multi-tubular boiler. Timothy Hackworth (1786–1850) and the team of John Braithwaite (1797–1870) and John Ericsson (1803–1889) were Rocket’s main rivals; Ericsson later became famous in the United States for the ironclad USS Monitor.

What happened at Rainhill

Rocket ran on 8 October and completed the full programme. Hauling a load of about 13 tons, it averaged roughly 12 mph (19 km/h) over the runs, comfortably above the required 10 mph, and when running more lightly it reached about 29–30 mph. It was the only locomotive to meet every condition.

Novelty thrilled spectators with bursts of speed of up to about 28 mph, but it repeatedly broke down. A burst pipe ended its first attempt, and further failures of pipes and joints forced it to withdraw. Sans Pareil was found to be over the permitted weight; it was nevertheless allowed to run, and performed respectably until a cracked cylinder ended its trial. Perseverance, repaired after its accident, could manage only about 5–6 mph and was withdrawn. Cycloped dropped out after its horse broke through the floor of the treadmill.

On 14 October the judges’ verdict was clear. The Stephensons and Booth received the £500 prize, and the company soon ordered more locomotives from Robert Stephenson and Company.

Why Rocket worked: the technology

Rocket was not the first locomotive, but it brought together several ideas in one light, reliable machine:

• Multi-tubular boiler. Instead of a single large flue, hot gases from the fire passed through 25 copper tubes running the length of the boiler. This greatly increased the heating surface and so the amount of steam produced. Henry Booth is credited with suggesting the idea to the Stephensons; the French engineer Marc Seguin had developed a similar boiler independently in France.
• Separate firebox. The fire burned in a box surrounded by a jacket of water, which also turned to steam.
• Blastpipe. Exhaust steam from the cylinders was sent up the chimney, creating a draught that pulled air through the fire. The harder the engine worked, the hotter the fire burned.
• Direct drive. Two cylinders, at first mounted at a steep angle, drove the front wheels directly through connecting rods, without heavy gearing.

The engine itself weighed about 4.25 tons. Within a year the Stephensons had improved the layout in later designs, lowering the cylinders and moving them to the front, but the combination of fire-tube boiler, firebox and blastpipe remained the heart of almost every steam locomotive until the end of steam.

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway

The railway opened on 15 September 1830 with a grand procession of eight trains carrying hundreds of guests, among them the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington. George Stephenson drove the leading locomotive, Northumbrian, the latest of his designs.

The day was marred by tragedy. When the trains stopped at Parkside to take on water, a number of passengers stepped down onto the track. William Huskisson, MP for Liverpool and a former President of the Board of Trade, was struck by Rocket as it approached on the other line. His leg was badly crushed, and he died that evening at Eccles. His death was the first widely reported railway passenger fatality and drew attention to the dangers of the new technology as well as its speed.

Regular services began the next day. Unlike earlier lines, the Liverpool and Manchester was double-tracked, ran to a timetable, carried both passengers and goods, and used only steam locomotives on its main line. Passenger traffic far exceeded expectations, and the railway was soon profitable.

Myths and facts

Myth: Rocket was the first steam locomotive. Steam locomotives had run since 1804, and several were working on colliery lines in north-east England in the 1810s and 1820s. Rocket’s importance lay in combining proven ideas into an engine that was fast, light and dependable.

Myth: Rocket survives as it ran at Rainhill. The surviving engine was rebuilt and modified during its working life, which ended around 1840 on a colliery line in Cumberland, and parts were lost. What visitors see is the remains of a much-altered machine.

Myth: Novelty lost because it was slower. Novelty was quick, at least in short bursts. It lost because it broke down; reliability, not top speed alone, was what the judges were testing.

Timeline

• 1826, May: Parliament authorises the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
• 1829, March: Walker and Rastrick report to the directors, leaning towards fixed engines.
• 1829, April: The directors announce a £500 prize for the best locomotive.
• 1829, 6 October: The Rainhill Trials begin before large crowds.
• 1829, 8 October: Rocket completes the full test programme.
• 1829, 14 October: The trials end with Rocket declared the winner.
• 1830, 15 September: The railway opens; William Huskisson is fatally injured by Rocket at Parkside.
• 1830, 16 September: Regular public services begin.

By the numbers

Legacy

Rainhill ended the argument between locomotives and stationary engines on main lines. The success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway triggered a wave of railway building in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, and engineers from continental Europe and the United States came to study it. Many early foreign lines bought locomotives from Robert Stephenson and Company or copied its designs.

The steam locomotive itself was the descendant of a long line of experiments with steam power going back to James Watt’s improvements to the steam engine, but Rainhill marked the point where it became a practical, commercial machine. In 1979, for the 150th anniversary, replicas of Rocket, Novelty and Sans Pareil ran at Rainhill again.

Why it matters

The Rainhill Trials turned the steam locomotive from an engineering gamble into the accepted way to power railways. By proving that a light engine with a multi-tubular boiler and blastpipe could run reliably at speeds no horse could match, Rocket helped launch the railway age that transformed trade, travel and daily life across the world.