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 1858, Messrs. Lough and Messenger, of Swindon, England, designed and
erected a steam-road locomotive which for two years ran at fifteen miles
an hour on level roads, and six miles an hour up grades of one in twenty.
The engine had two cylinders, each three and one-half inches in diameter
and with five-inch stroke, working direct on to the crank axle. The
driving wheels were three and one-half feet in diameter, and the leading
wheels two feet in diameter. The vertical boiler fixed on the frame was
worked at one-hundred-and-twenty-pound pressure. The tanks held forty
gallons of feed water. The total weight of the locomotive was eight
hundred pounds.
THOMAS RICKETT
When the revival of interest in the common-road steam locomotive began in
England, about 1857, Thomas Rickett, of Castle Foundry, Buckingham, was
one of the first to give attention to the subject. He built a road
locomotive in 1858 for the Marquis of Stafford. This engine had two
driving wheels and a steering wheel. The boiler was at the back with the
steam cylinders horizontally on each side of it. Three passengers were
carried.
The carriage was steered by means of a lever connected with the fork of
the front wheel. The cylinders were three inches in diameter, with
nine-inch stroke; the working steam pressure was one hundred pounds per
square inch. The driving wheels were three feet in diameter. The weight of
the carriage when fully loaded was only three thousand pounds. On level
roads the speed was about twelve miles an hour.
An account of one of the trips in 1859 was as follows in the columns of
The Engineer: "Lord Stafford and party made another trip with the steam
carriage from Buckingham to Wolverton. His lordship drove and steered, and
although the roads were very heavy, they were not more than an hour in
running the nine miles to Old Wolverton. His lordship has repeatedly said
that it is guided with the greatest ease and precision. It was designed by
Mr. Rickett to run ten miles an hour. One mile in five minutes has been
attained, at which it was perfectly steady, the centre of gravity being
not more than two feet from the ground. A few days afterwards this little
engine started from Messrs. Hayes' Works, Stoney Stratford, with a party
consisting of the Marquis of Stafford, Lord Alfred Paget, and two
Hungarian noblemen. They proceeded through the town of Stoney Stratford at
a rapid pace, and after a short trip returned to the Wolverton railway
station. The trip was in all respects successful, and shows beyond a doubt
that steam locomotion for common roads is practicable."
Two other engines were built by Rickett, one of them for the Earl of
Caithness. Some improvements were installed in this carriage, which was
intended to carry three passengers. The weight of the carriage, fully
loaded, was five thousand pounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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