As may readily be imagined, the jets of steam from the piston, blowing off into the air at high pressure while the engine was in motion, caused considerable annoyance to horses passing along the Wylam road, at that time a public highway. The nuisance was felt to be almost intolerable, and a neighboring gentleman threatened to have it put down. To diminish the noise as much as possible, Mr. Blackett gave orders that so soon as any horse, or vehicle drawn by horses, came in sight, the locomotive was to be stopped, and the frightful blast of the engine thus suspended until the passing animals had got out of sight. Much interruption was thus caused to the working of the railway, and it excited considerable dissatisfaction among the workmen. The following plan was adopted to abate the nuisance: a reservoir was provided immediately behind the chimney (as shown in the opposite cut) into which the waste steam was thrown after it had performed its office in the cylinder, and from this reservoir the steam gradually escaped into the atmosphere without noise. This arrangement was devised with the express object of preventing a blast in the chimney, the value of which, as we shall subsequently find, was not detected until George Stephenson, adopting it with a preconceived design and purpose, demonstrated its importance and value--as being, in fact, the very life-breath of the locomotive engine. While Mr. Blackett was thus experimenting and building locomotives at Wylam, George Stephenson was anxiously studying the same subject at Killingworth. He was no sooner appointed engine-wright of the collieries than his attention was directed to the means of more economically hauling the coal from the pits to the river side. We have seen that one of the first important improvements which he made, after being placed in charge of the colliery machinery, was to apply the surplus power of a pumping steam-engine fixed underground, for the purpose of drawing the coals out of the deeper workings of the Killingworth mines, by which he succeeded in effecting a large reduction in the expenditure on manual and horse labor.