Salamanca

Salamanca, designed and built by Matthew MurrayMatthew Murray was an engineer born in Newcastle on Tyne who became known for improving steam engines and building the first commercially successful steam locomotive. in 1812, was the world’s first commercially successful steam locomotive. The rack and pinion locomotive was built by Fenton, Murray and Wood at the Round FoundryEngineering works off Water Lane in Holbeck, Leeds in Yorkshire, built for Fenton, Murray and Wood. in Holbeck, Leeds for the Middleton Colliery. John BlenkinsopMining engineer at Charles Brandling’s Middleton Collieries who patented a rack and pinion system for a steam locomotive and commissioned the first practical railway locomotive from Fenton, Murray and Wood’s Round Foundry in Holbeck, Leeds in 1811. , the colliery manager, designed its rack propulsion system. A cog wheel on the left side of the locomotive engaged with a rack on the outside of the narrow gauge tracks, driven by two 8″ × 20″ cylinders embedded into the top of the centre-flue boiler. The piston crossheads worked in guides. Their boilers were made of cast iron, oval in section, and operated at 55 lb per sq. in. The wheels were 3 feet (0.9 m) in diameter and the cog wheels 2 inches (5.1 cm) larger.^[1]

Salamanca was one of four locomotives built for the colliery railway. It was destroyed in 1818 when its boiler exploded. George Stephenson, giving evidence to a parliamentary committee, said that the driver had tampered with the safety valve. The other engines saw up to twenty years of service.^[1]

The locomotive was named after the Duke of Wellington’s victory in the Peninsular War in Spain in the Battle of Salamanca.^[1] George Walker’s watercolour painting The Collier incorporated an image of the locomotive hauling coal wagons at the Middleton pits.

Robert DaglishRobert Daglish (1779–1865) was a colliery manager, mining, mechanical and civil engineer at the start of the railway era. , manager of the Orrell Collieries, built the Walking HorseLancashire’s first steam locomotive, built by Robert Daglish in 1812 at the Haigh Foundry for colliery owner, John Clarke; it entered service the following year. locomotive under licence from Blenkinsop at the Haigh Foundry in 1812; it entered service in 1813.^[2]