И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

TEXT 1. THE BEGINNING

OF THE STEAM RAILROAD
The world had railroads before it had steam locomo­tives, even before it had a steam engine. The idea of the railroad and the idea of steam traction developed sepa­rately. It was only when the two ideas were combined that the steam railroad came into existence.

There are records which indicate that railroads were built in England early in the seventeenth century. These first railroads, and others which were built subsequently, were usually called tramways, and they were used chiefly for the transportation of coal from mines to waterways. The early railroads had wooden flanged rails. The first great technical improvement in railway transportation came when some unknown, ingenious mechanic conceived the idea of removing the flange from the rail and placing it on the inner side of the wheels of the railroad vehicle.

The early railroads were not public roads. They wer. private roads constructed for special use by their ownere-Their superiority over ordinary roads was so great, hows ever, that a number of persons believed it would be prac­ticable as well as profitable to build railroads for public use.

One is a bit surprised to learn that the steam engine was not used successfully in transportation for nearly two scores of years after its invention, and that the steam boat preceded the steam locomotive by a score of years. It is obvious that the early mechanical engineers found that making use of the sfeam engine as a source of power for transportation was a difficult matter, and that employing it to drive a wheeled vehicle on land was more difficult than using it to gropel a boat through water.

It was not that engineers and inventors did not have faith in steam power. Before the end of the eighteenth century engineers predicted the coming of steam transporfation both by land and by water, and a few crude steam boats and "steam wagons" were actually built and operated.

The real beginning of railroad transportation was due to to the success of the Rocket, the steam locomotive de­signed and built by George Stephenson. The matter is that the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, uncertain whether to begin its operation under horse power or steam, decided to offer a prize of £500 for a steam lo­comotive, which should weigh less than six tons, be capable of drawing a weight of not less than twenty tons on a level track, and maintain a speed of at least ten miles an hour. There were other conditions to be met, but these were the most important.

Three locomotives participated in the trials, and one, the Rocket, more than met the conditions of the test, it weighed only 4 ½ tons, it reached a maximum speed of 29 miles an hour, and maintained an average speed of 15 miles an hour for a distance of 30 miles.

Steam transportation by land was at last definitely on the way. But for a few years it was of slow growth. There had to be much experimentation before some of the prob­lems of construction and operation could be solved.