George Stephenson (1781-1848)

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George Stephenson was the first man who put a steam-engine on wheels. The English call him the “Father of Railways”.

Stephenson was born in the family of a poor worker near the city of Newcastle, one of the industrial centers of England. The boy’s father could not send him to school so George helped his mother to look after the younger children in the family. His duty was to see that his little brothers and sisters did not get under the horses that pulled coal-cars on the wooden rails near his father’s house. The boy looked at those rails every day and knew how often they were repaired. He decided then that iron rails could be better.

At eight Stephenson began to work as a horse-driver in a coal-mine. The boy could not read and write but he did not forget about the iron rails. Now he thought of a steam-engine which could do the work of twenty horses. He built a model in clay of such an engine. At nineteen he was put to work on a steam-engine. Now he had time to learn reading and writing. Soon he made a design of a locomotive, which moved on iron rails. But Stephenson could not build it as he had no money.

Stephenson was fifty years old when some businessmen decided to build an iron railway and see how Stephenson’s locomotive worked. The first railway was built between Stockton and Darlington. On the day when it was opened a man on a horse went in front of the engine and shouted that the train was coming. People on horses and in carriages were driving near the train. When they had gone for some time, Stephenson, who was running his locomotive, asked the horseman to go away. He put steam on and ran his locomotive as fast as 12 miles an hour (about 20 kilometers).

Parliament didn’t want to build railways. They said locomotive could not run against a strong wind. Then Stephenson built a new locomotive and called it “The Rocket”. His son Robert helped him. This locomotive was faster and stronger than the first one, it could pull thirteen tons and run twenty-nine miles (46 kilometers) an hour.

This time the railway company agreed to use Stephenson’s locomotive. The first railway in England was built in 1825 and the first railway in Russia was opened in 1837. It went from Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin).