I
know there are great and almost unsurmountable difficulties to be
encountered, but what I have said will come to pass as sure as
you live. I only wish I may live to see the day, though that I
can scarcely hope for, as I know how slow all human progress is,
and with what difficulty I have been able to get the locomotive
thus far adopted, notwithstanding my more than ten years'
successful experiment at Killingworth."
The first train over the road was such an one as had never been
seen before. George Stephenson was at the lever when the engine
pulled out with a string of eight cars behind it. One regular
passenger coach--the first ever built--held the directors, and
twenty-one improvised passenger "wagons" carried some six hundred
daring individuals. Coal and flour filled the other cars. The
journey was safely accomplished at a speed which is said at times
to have reached the hitherto unheard of rate of twelve miles an
hour. The road, with its three Stephenson locomotives and many
horses, was successful from the first, and its dividends were
among the chief inducements which led to the next and more
important advance in railroad construction, the Liverpool and
Manchester line.
Manchester was the great manufacturing center of the industrial
England, which the inventions of Arkwright and Watt had called
into existence.
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