Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1893 — A Famous Locomotive. [ARTICLE]

A Famous Locomotive.

It is remarkable that one of the fastest, if riot the fastest, engines now" running wus built forty-five years ago. She was designed when the great competition between the vanished broad gauge nnd the narrow gauge was at its height. The Great VVestern on the broad gauge had beaten all records by apon several occasions obtuiuiug a maximum speed of seventy-eight miles un hour, and it was necessary to heat her on the narrow gauge. The result was the building by F. Trevithick, Superintendent of the Northern Division of the London and Northwestern Railroad, of the Cornwall. Her driving wheel was made six inches larger than that of the Great Western, which wns eight feet in diameter. Mr. Trevithick, in order to obtain a large driving wheel and a low centre of gravity, adopted the peculiar plan of placing the boiler under the driving axle. The driving wheel of eight feet six inches was the largest size which had then or lias since been tried upon the ordinary four feet eight aud one-third inch gauge, the cylinder being seventeen and a half inches diameter aud twenty-four inches stroke. The engine appears to have fully answered the expectations of her designer, for upon the trial trip a speed - of fully seventy-nine miles an hour was attained under favorable circumstances, thus beating the Great Western by one mile an hour. She wus shown at the exhibition of 1851, but the position of her boiler was not approved, and in 186:1 a new boiler was put in her above the axle. • It is interesting to know that tho engine is still working the forty-five minute expresses between Manchester and Liverpool, one of the fastest services in the kingdom, and it is stated that still, after her forty-five years’ service, with a load equal to her power, she is capable of running at the highest possible speed yet attained.—[London Graphic.