Automobile Biographies: An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common RoadsWeeks, Lyman Horace
History
Automobile Biographies: An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common Roads
Weeks, Lyman Horace
Automobiles -- History
In the following year Trevithick went to London with his cousin, Andrew
Vivian, and secured a patent. Early in 1803 he made his second steam
carriage. This was built at Camborne and taken to London, via Plymouth,
for exhibition. Its journey along the highways thoroughly alarmed the
country people. Coleridge relates that a toll-gate keeper was so
frightened at the appearance of the sputtering, smoke-spitting thing of
fearsome mien that, trembling in every limb and with teeth chattering, he
threw aside the toll-gate with the scared exclamation, "No--noth--nothing
to pay. My de--dear Mr. Devil, do drive on as fast as you can. Nothing to
pay!"
The engine in this carriage had a cylinder five and one-half inches in
diameter, with a stroke of two and one-half feet, and with thirty pounds
of steam it worked five strokes per minute. In every way it was superior
to its predecessor. It was not so heavy; and the horizontal cylinder,
instead of the vertical, added very much to its steadiness of motion;
while wheels of a larger diameter enabled it the more easily to pass over
rough roads which had brought the Camborne one to a standstill. The boiler
was made entirely of wrought iron, and the cylinder was inserted
horizontally, close behind the driving axle. A forked piston-rod was used,
the ends working in guides, so that the crank axle might be brought near
to the cylinder. Spur gearing and couplings were used on each side of the
carriage for communicating motion from the crank shaft to the main driving
axle. The driving-wheels were about ten feet diameter, and made of wood.
The framing was of wrought iron. The coach was intended to seat eight or
ten persons, and the greater part of the weight came on the driving axle.
The coach was suspended upon springs.
The London steam carriage was put together at Felton's carriage shop, in
Leather Lane, and after its completion, Vivian one day ran the locomotive
from Leather Lane, Gray's Inn Lane, on to Lords' Cricket Ground, to
Paddington, and home again by way of Islington, a journey of ten miles
through the streets of London. Several trips were made in Tottenham Court
Road and Euston Square, and only once did they meet with accident.
Finally, however, the frame of the carriage got twisted, and the engine
was detached and set to driving a mill.
Trevithick's next experiment was made in 1803-4, while he was engineer of
the Pen-y-darran iron works, near Merthyr Tydvil, where he built and ran
on a railway a locomotive that was fairly successful. In 1808 he built a
locomotive for a circular railway or steam circus that he and Andrew
Vivian set up in London, near Euston Square. This ran for several weeks,
carrying passengers at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour around
curves of fifty or one hundred feet radius. One day a rail broke and the
engine was overturned, which ended the exhibition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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