September 27
CHOO-CHOO DAY
Remember the children’s story about the train that could? The little choo-choo made it
to the top of the hill, pulling its load, by will power, courage, strength and thought,
“I think I can, I think I can.”Well, this story is about the beginning of the trains that could and did. On this day in 1825, England’s Stockton and Darlington line opened. It was the first line to have a passenger train pulled along the tracks by a locomotive, the first time an engine -- not a horse -- had accomplished this. (The very first steam-engine locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick, also of England, in 1804.) Several years later, the locomotive, the Rocket, designed by George Stephenson, and his son Robert, with input from Henry Booth of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, won the Rainhill Trials. Rocket, the first truly successful steam locomotive, beat out ten other locomotives and remains the model for most steam locomotives even today. Critics were a little wary of these first iron horses. One said that it would make stay-at-homes into gadabouts; honest men into liars and be the downfall of an intellectual society. Some choo-choo, eh? |
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