He had also the advantage, about the same time, of seeing one of Blenkinsop's Leeds engines, which was placed on the tram-way leading from the collieries of Kenton and Coxlodge, on the 2d of September, 1813. This locomotive drew sixteen chaldron wagons, containing an aggregate weight of seventy tons, at the rate of about three miles an hour. George Stephenson and several of the Killingworth men were among the crowd of spectators that day; and after examining the engine and observing its performances, he remarked to his companions that "he thought he could make a better engine than that, to go upon legs." Probably he had heard of the invention of Brunton, whose patent had by this time been published, and proved the subject of much curious speculation in the colliery districts. Certain it is that, shortly after the inspection of the Coxlodge engine, he contemplated the construction of a new locomotive, which was to surpass all that had preceded it. He observed that those engines which had been constructed up to this time, however ingenious in their arrangements, were in a great measure practical failures. Mr. Blackett's was as yet both clumsy and expensive. Chapman's had been removed from the Heaton tram-way in 1812, and was regarded as a total failure. And the Blenkinsop engine at Coxlodge was found very unsteady and costly in its working; besides, it pulled the rails to pieces, the entire strain being upon the rack-rail on one side of the road. The boiler, however, having shortly blown up, there was an end of that engine, and the colliery owners did not feel encouraged to try any farther experiment. An efficient and economical working locomotive engine, therefore, still remained to be invented, and to accomplish this object Stephenson now applied himself. Profiting by what his predecessors had done, warned by their failures and encouraged by their partial successes, he commenced his labors. There was still wanting the man who should accomplish for the locomotive what James Watt had done for the steam-engine, and combine in a complete form the best points in the separate plans of others, embodying with them such original inventions and adaptations of his own as to entitle him to the merit of inventing the working locomotive, as James Watt is to be regarded as the inventor of the working condensing engine. This was the great work upon which George Stephenson now entered, though probably without any adequate idea of the ultimate importance of his labors to society and civilization.