Page 4 - Gen Mag Online November 2020

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THE RAINHILL RAILWAY TRIALS

Rainhill is a sleepy town in the Merseyside region, about 6 miles from Liverpool. Little much happens
here, but it did in 1829.

This particular year saw a competition take place between a number of engines to see which was
the best for the developing railway system.

Railways were just beginning in Britain. With the Liverpool to Manchester track nearing completion
it was set to take off. However, those involved wanted something interesting to pull the carriages.
So a bargain was struck which allowed prominent engineers to pit their wits against each other.

Essentially the race was between two types of engine - stationary steam engine and locomotive.
The former was already well known as the system was already in use in industry such as mills and
for power generation. A steam locomotive was different and was designed to pull heavy objects,
and that according to those who designed them obviously included railway carriages.

A prize was offered to the winner of the trial with a number of tests applied to help determine which
engine coped best. The tests which were amended at particular points included such things as the
ability or not to carry its own fuel and water. Those that couldn’t used tenders and the latter were
then included in the final weight of the engine. Those that could carry its own fuel and water were
also proportionately weight reduced to ensure fairness, and was dependent on the size of the
engine.

The actual race was over a length of 2.8 kilometres (one and ¾ miles). Each engine had to do 10
trips. This essentially covered some 35 miles, the distance between Liverpool and Manchester.
This mattered because any engine needed to be able to pull carriages for that length of time, and
presumably not break down en route. Further, 30 of those miles had to be carried out at the top
speed of the engine.

The first railway at the time was the Darlington to Stockton rail line in the North East of England.
This had been operating since 1825 and continued to 1863. However its problem wasn’t the railway
line itself, but the speed of the trains, which could only travel at around 8 miles an hour. The people
involved with the Railway Trials were looking to improve on this speed. Hence, the organisers
expected double that speed to 16 miles an hour.

The Sans Pareil (without equal)

Six engines originally were entered into the
trial, but on the day of the event - the 6 th
October 1829 - only 5 actually entered.
These were given exotic names namely,
Cycloped, Novelty, Perseverance, Sans
Pareil and the Rocket. The Cycloped, built
by Thomas Shaw Brandreth of Liverpool

was the only engine not to use steam power. Instead. it used a treadmill with a horse on top which
kept it moving. Horses were well known to pull barges along canals, but this was a first for a railway
engine.

Unfortunately, for Brandreth, despite being one of those involved in the organisation of the trials,
the experiment was a failure. It was unable to gather enough speed to effectively compete.