200 years of rail transport

On February 21st, Britain will be celebrating the Bicentennial of Rail. The date marks the invention of the first ever locomotive by a Cornish man named Richard Trevithick (1771-1833).

Trevithick's famous 'Penydarren locomotive', as it came to be known, seems to have been the result of a 500-guinea bet between him and a certain Richard Crawshay. Indeed, Crawshay, an industrial rival, thought that Trevithick's idea that a tramway would be an ideal and smooth test-bed for a locomotive was ridiculous and that the wheels would only end up spinning round uselessly.

Trevithick began building his 'tram road engine' on a line in South Wales whose primitive wagons were still pulled, slowly and laboriously, by horses. The engine he produced was based on a static steam engine Trevithick had built at Coalbrookdale and included a lot of ideas from his previous road engines.

On February 21, 1804, Trevithick's pioneering engine hauled a massive 10 tons of iron - along with 70 men - nearly ten miles from Penydarren, at a speed of five mph. But Trevithick was 20 years ahead of his time. Too heavy, and too powerful, the locomotive finally ran off the track, and the high expectations it had raised fell down with it.  Despite an 1808 revised version of his locomotive, Trevithick abandoned his project and died penniless at the age of 62. Yet, by 1845, a network of 2,440 miles of railway was open and 30 million passengers were being carried in Britain alone.

While the rail evolved considerably throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with other great engineering geniuses fostering its progress, the Penydarren locomotive will forever symbolise its birth, while Richard Trevithick will always stand as its creator. With the launch in January of a new £2 coin by the Royal Mint - bearing both his name and his ingenious invention, a coin approved by Queen Elizabeth II - Trevithick has at last received the public recognition he deserves.

But 2004 also marks the centenary of another major event in the history of rail. In May 1904, the newly-built 'City of Truro' made the world's first ever 100mph run, hauling a train of ocean mails from Plymouth to London.  This locomotive was to hold the record for years.

Among the highlights of this year's celebrations, there will be a full-size replica of the Penydarren locomotive which will be fully restored in time to mark the anniversary. The locomotive will be exhibited, along with other important engines from the past and present, at a major Railfest at the National Railway Museum in York in the summer (May 29 - June 6).

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