Rainford Trials

10^th August 2019

Rainford Trials

Rotarian Colin Lovell enticed 14 members of Llandudno Rotary to a talk that had been billed as “S*x, violence and Fast Living”

For reasons never satisfactorily explained this actually became an erudite exposition of the Rainford Trials of 1829

It seems that in a remarkable act of commercial brio, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company had, by October 1829, after some three years, almost completed building the 35 mile track between the two growing cities and only then saw fit to hold a competition to see which type of engine would be best equipped to run the train service – the origins of the term “competitive tendering”, maybe?

It was probably the elaborate rules that had been drawn up to determine weight, traction, fuel storage, speed measurement etc that caused 5 of the 10 original entrants not to show up on the day

Of the five that did, it was George Stephenson’s “Rocket” that famously succeeded, beating, amongst others, the “Cycloped”,  a device which suffered the indignity of its power-source – a horse – falling through the floorboards of the engine

Incredibly, a mere 50 weeks later the line opened as the world’s first inter-city rail journey, its other “firsts” being a steam-only service, double-track, a signalling system and being an authorised carrier of mail

The rail age was born!

On behalf of the Club, Rtn. Chris Drew thanked Colin for his talk