There’s not much left of the Novelty, just four wheels and a cylinder. But if fate had not dealt this smart little locomotive such a lousy hand one day in October 1829, things could have turned out differently. Novelty might have been the world’s most famous locomotive and Stephenson’s Rocket just a footnote in the history books. Today, what’s left of Novelty is fitted into a plywood replica on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, a reminder that technological success isn’t always the result of genius. Sometimes, despite all the creativity and effort involved, it all boils down to luck.
PEOPLE came in their thousands. There were flags and a brass band, and a special stand for the ladies, who came decked out in their most fashionable finery. Most had come simply for the spectacle. But there were some with a more pressing interest. Among the crowds were scientists, mechanics and engineers. Two had come all the way from America. It was 6 October 1829, and this was the first day of the Rainhill Trials, an event billed as the Battle of the Locomotives. At stake was a prize of £500 and the future of the railways.
Rainhill was a little place near the Liverpool end of the new Liverpool and Manchester Railway, a thirty-mile stretch of railroad with no trains. For the past three years, as the track was built, the directors of the railway dithered about what they should use to pull the wagons along the track. Some favoured horse-drawn carriages. Most backed a system of stationary engines and cables to pull the carriages along. No one seriously considered the newfangled steam locomotives. They might be alright for hauling coal short distances, but they wouldn’t do for what was to be the world’s first passenger railway with a regular service between two great cities. Steam locomotives were an untried technology and as far as the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway were concerned, they were dirty, dangerous and unreliable.
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One man thought differently. The railway’s chief engineer was George Stephenson, who had already built a number of steam locomotives with his son Robert. He tried to convince the company that the future lay with locomotives, pestering them until eventually they agreed to hold a competition. If anyone could build a locomotive that could outperform stationary engines, they might consider using them.
In April 1829, the railway announced a prize of £500 for “the most improved locomotive engine”. All entrants had to meet a stringent set of conditions on size, cost and safety features. They also had to be powerful and fast, able to pull three times their own weight for 70 miles at a speed of at least 10 miles per hour. Any engine that qualified could take part in a trial in October, where it would be put through its paces on a short stretch of track at Rainhill.
The Stephensons, who had already built more locomotives than anyone else, began work immediately. But it wasn’t until two months before the contest that news of the prize reached two London engineers, John Braithwaite and his partner, a 22-year-old Swede called John Ericsson.
When they heard about the contest, they had just built the first practical steam-driven fire engine. With so little time, they decided to adapt the design of their fire engine to run on rails. The result was the Novelty-named after a London Theatre. Novelty was a light, streamlined locomotive that carried its own fuel and water. One of its key features was a pair of leather bellows used to push a stream of hot gas from the firebox into the boiler-heating the water to raise a head of steam.
The pair worked quickly and Novelty was ready on time. But working in London had a serious drawback. There was no railway line where they could test their creation. The locomotive’s first test run would have to be at Rainhill, in front of the crowds-and the judges.
When the big day arrived, there were only four engines in the contest. Novelty was the clear winner with the public. They loved its elegant lines, its classy blue paintwork and shining copper-clad boiler. Rocket was ugly by comparison. It was much heavier and dragged its coal and water behind it in a separate tender. Rocket’s main innovation was its powerful boiler heated not by the usual pair of flues running from the firebox but by a whole clutch of tubes. The public didn’t like it at all.
The other two hopefuls were Sans Pareil, built by Timothy Hackworth, an established railway engineer, and Perseverance, built by Timothy Burstall of Edinburgh.
On the first day of the trials, Novelty made an impressive start. The crowd cheered as the little locomotive nipped back and forth along the tracks. “The great lightness of this engine, its compactness, and its beautiful workmanship, excited universal admiration,” reported Mechanics Magazine. The Liverpool Mercury was more delighted still: “It seemed, indeed, to fly, presenting one of the most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world has ever beheld.”
The next day didn’t go quite so well. Even before the judges arrived, Novelty’s bellows burst, temporarily putting it out of action. But it was easily fixed, and Braithwaite and Ericsson were soon ready to show how hard Novelty could work. On 10 October, they set off with a load of 7 tons. On the first leg, everything went well. On the return, a pipe burst and leaked water everywhere. It was a minor hitch, and Novelty was soon off again, reaching a cracking 28 miles per hour.
Perseverance and Sans Pareil were bedevilled by similar troubles and worse. Only the unpopular cinder-spitting Rocket managed to stay out of trouble, giving a consistently good performance.
Fed up with all the stops and starts, the judges decided to award the prize to whichever locomotive met all their requirements on 14 October. Everything hinged on that one day. Sans Pareil was disqualified for being overweight and consuming too much coke. Perseverance couldn’t manage more than about 6 miles per hour. Novelty set off. “But again it broke down,” reported writer Samuel Smiles-without giving any details. Rocket took the prize and went on to become the prototype for steam locomotives for the next 140 years.
But what might have happened had Rocket gone off the rails on that vital day? Perhaps the railway would have stuck to the tried and tested technology of stationary engines-and remained firmly in the 18th century. Or maybe they would have given the engineers another chance. With a few more tests to sort out its teething troubles, Novelty could have triumphed-and Braithwaite and Ericsson rather than George Stephenson might have ended up on the back of Britain’s £5 note.
