| Re: On This Day - 6 October 1829 - Rainhill trials of steam engines, in Lancashire Posted by grahame at 18:15, 6th October 2026 |     |
The Rainhill trials of the first steam locomotives were held in Lancashire (now Merseyside), from 6 to 14 October 1829.
See Wikipedia for excellent coverage of that historic event.
See Wikipedia for excellent coverage of that historic event.
Thanks for starting a thread on that important event - however, we need to take care of the description. Perhaps the first railway to run paid passenger trains between places using steam traction?
From the British Library - https://www.bl.uk/stories/blogs/posts/catch-me-who-can-trevithicks-steam-locomotive-demonstration-of-1808
In September 1808, the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick exhibited and operated a steam engine called Catch Me Who Can on a circular track of about 100 feet in radius, on a site to the south of Euston Road within walking distance of the British Library. This was the first time in the world that a steam locomotive was used to haul paying passengers on a railway. (It was not the first time that passengers had been carried by steam at all, as five years earlier Trevithick had carried passengers on a steam-powered road vehicle, the London Steam Carriage, and in 1804 had used the world's first steam railway locomotive to haul employees of the Penydarren ironworks in Wales.)
And not a locomotive but in some ways a "steam engine' - the first use of steam power was to turn kebabs
* The Inventor: Taqi al-Din was a famous 16th-century Ottoman astronomer, engineer, and mathematician.
* The Device: In his 1551 book, he described a copper water boiler with a pipe that directed a jet of steam onto a rotating vane wheel.
* The Purpose: The wheel turned a spit to cook meat evenly without manual labor.
* The Device: In his 1551 book, he described a copper water boiler with a pipe that directed a jet of steam onto a rotating vane wheel.
* The Purpose: The wheel turned a spit to cook meat evenly without manual labor.
| On This Day - 6 October 1829 - Rainhill trials of steam engines, in Lancashire Posted by Chris from Nailsea at 15:52, 6th October 2026 | |
The Rainhill trials of the first steam locomotives were held in Lancashire (now Merseyside), from 6 to 14 October 1829.
See Wikipedia for excellent coverage of that historic event.
