d practical failures. Mr.
Blackett's was as yet both clumsy and expensive. Chapman's had been
removed from the Heaton tramway 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 soon after blown up, there was an end of that
engine; and the colliery owners did not feel encouraged to try any
further experiment.

An efficient and economical working locomotive, therefore, still remained
to be invented; and to accomplish this object Mr. Stephenson now applied
himself. Profiting by what his predecessors had done, warned by their
failures and encouraged by their partial successes, he commenced his
labours. 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, in
the same manner 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 labours to society and civilization.

He proceeded to bring the subject of constructing a "Travelling Engine,"
as he then denominated the locomotive, under the notice of the lessees of
the Killingworth Colliery, in the year 1813. Lord Ravensworth, the
principal partner, had already formed a very favourable opinion of the
new engine-wright, from the improvements which he had effected in the
colliery engines, both above and below ground; and, after considering the
matter, and hearing Stephenson's explanations, he authorised him to
proceed with the construction of a locomotive,--though his lordship was,
by some, called a fool for advancing money for such a purpose. "The
first locomotive that I made," said Stephenson, many years after, {82}
when speaking of his early career at a public meeting in Newcastle, "was
at Killingworth Colliery, and with Lord Ravensworth's money. Yes; Lord
Ravensworth and partners were the first to entrust me, thirty-two years
since, with money to make a locomotive engine. I said to my friends,
there was