Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/112

 CHAPTER VII.

order to meet the locomotive requirements of modern times, and to draw long and heavy trains at the high rates of speed now demanded by the public, there has naturally had to be a great development in the engines employed for the purpose, and indeed nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the primitive machines which were regarded as triumphs of engineering skill in the early days of railways, and the magnificent engines which are produced in these modern times. This contrast is very forcibly illustrated by our reproduction in Plate XVII. of a photograph of the old "Rocket," the first engine made by George Stephenson for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in 1829, which is still preserved in the South Kensington Museum, and which the reader may compare with the representation in Plate XVIII. of the "Marchioness of Stafford," embodying perhaps the highest form of development of the passenger train engine of the present day. The latter was exhibited by its inventor, Mr. Francis W. Webb, the locomotive superintendent and chief mechanical engineer of the London and North-Western Railway, at the "Inventions" Exhibition at Kensington, in 1885. Let none, however, venture to despise the humble "Rocket," with her wheels with wooden rims, her ungainly appearance, and, as we are now told, her