Station; and the Patent Museum only wants this engine to possess the most interesting group of Locomotives in the world. The Stockton and Darlington Railway was one of the first examples of Locomotive power on a railway for passengers. In 1814, George Stephenson constructed an engine for the Killingworth Colliery, near Newcastle, in which toothed wheels were employed to engage and turn all the four wheels of the engine, and so to utilize all their adhesive power, to "bite" the rails.

In the Patent Museum at South Kensington, may be seen a patriarchal Locomotive, rigged with iron beams and rods, which liken it almost to a ship. This is the premier Locomotive-a machine which heralded changes almost as momentous as the Steam engine itself. Compared with one of the splendid engines of the Great Western or North-Western, 'Puffing Billy," the brainwork of William Headley, the Wylam Colliery viewer, and the handiwork of Jonathan Foster, the engineer or smith (for the two terms were almost synonymous in the year 1813), looks but a poor bungling piece of workmanship out of which it would seem hopeless to expect any good results. Yet this very engine was at work drawing eight wagon-loads of coals day by day from Leamington to the shipping port in the Tyne, eight miles distant, from the day she was set rolling until the moment she was finally taken off work for the purpose of being transferred to the Museum. In this engine the two great features which made the locomotive a success were first applied-the sufficiency for traction of the smooth rail and wheel, and the application of the steam-blast up the chimney. The sufficiency of the smooth rail and the wheel for traction was, indeed, the great principle, the establishment of which rescued the Locomotive from oblivion. The only means by which heavy loads could be drawn by locomotive power before Headley's time was by the employment of the toothed wheel and the racked rail, as introduced by Blenkinsop and Trevithick, but "the pull" tore up the racked rail, and consequently this system had to be abandoned for horses. It was in the year 1812, when the price of corn and all kinds of horse provender was so dear, that the necessity of substituting mechanical power for living muscle again thrust itself upon the attention of the Wylam viewer. Unless some saving could be made in the working of the colliery, the works must be closed, and himself and family thrown out of bread. Thus stimulated to exertior,

he brought out his plan of weighting the engine and of coupling the wheels so as to prevent any of them slipping. He proved this could be done experimentally, by constructing a wagon, weighting it with iron, and then propelling it by the power of several men seated upon it and working winches. The carriage thus weighted drew several loaded wagons well enough. In order to prove that it was the weight which caused the wheels to bite, in place of the iron load, were substituted a number of men who, at a given signal, left off working at the winches and jumped to the ground, when the wheels immediately began to slip round. The model of this experimental wagon, with the connected wheels, which thus solved the problem of making the smooth wheel adhere to the smooth rail, or, to use the language of Stephenson, of making "man and wife" of them, is in the Museum beside "Puffing Billy," and fully establishes the claim of William Headley to the discovery of this all-important principle.

We must now leave the Locomotive and return to the Railway, to describe in outline the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester line, sanctioned by Parliament in 1826. In the formation of this railway, be it remembered, the first,— the engineer had almost every variety of difficulty to contend with. He had hills to surmount, flats to pass, and to make firm, one of those loose morasses, which are not unfrequent in the north of England, but which had to be made as solid as the common ground before it would be able to sustain the ponderous weights which would have to pass over it. Chat Moss was notorious as one of the most dangerous and uncertain quagmires in the kingdom. Whether the instability of the ground for so many miles was owing to the filtering of the waves from the Irish Sea, or from the settling of the waters from the heights of Cumberland and Westmoreland, was, and is still, a problem. Many plans were followed, which proved unsuccessful; but at length the engineer decided upon throwing in bundles of "kids" or faggots, till at last a broad foundation, of floating basis, was established; as the workmen wrought higher and higher, the way gained hourly in solid character, and in the end, when the ballast for the rail was laid, a road firm, substantial, and enduring, was formed of the most fragile material upon which the engineer could lay his hand. Chat Moss was twenty to thirty feet deep, and four miles across. An eminent opposing engineer said, "No man in his senses would

attempt a railroad over Chat Moss." He calculated it would cost 227.000l. to cross it; yet it was completed for 40,000l. George Stephenson organized all the work himself, there being then neither contractors nor navvies; he sent for his son Robert, who had been some years in America, for his cooperation in the great work.

A viaduct, or elevated roadway, over Sankey Valley was another difficult work. For the security of this work, it was necessary to drive two hundred piles, varying from twenty to thirty feet in length, into the foundation of each of the ten piers: thus in all, two thousand piles had to be driven.

Mr. George Rennie has left some very interesting details of this Railway. The physical difficulties were great. The construction of the tunnel at Liverpool, on so great a scale, through the red sandstone rock; the crossing of the great Sankey Valley and its canal by a long and lofty viaduct, or bridge and embankment; also the Newton Valley, the bridge and embankment, beside other valleys of great length and depth; the construction of upwards of 100 bridges over and under the railway; the deep cutting through Olive Mount and Rainhill; the carrying the roadway over the much dreaded Chat and Parr Mosses; the determination of the width of