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Cycloped was an early horse-powered locomotive, built by Thomas Shaw Brandreth of Liverpool, which competed unsuccessfully in the Rainhill trials of October 1829.
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Cycloped was an early horse-powered locomotive, built by Thomas Shaw Brandreth of Liverpool, which competed unsuccessfully in the Rainhill trials of October 1829.
The Cycloped was the only entry in the trials that did not rely on steam power, instead utilising a treadmill that was kept continually moving by a horse mounted on top.
Brandreth was one of the directors of the railway and some people believed that that gave the Cycloped an unfair advantage. But the Cycloped was a primitive idea and because of its failure to generate enough speed to equal its competitors—Burstall's Perseverance, Braithwaite's Novelty, Hackworth's Sans Pareil and Stephenson's Rocket —the Cycloped ultimately lost the competition in the trials. [1] Stephenson's Rocket eventually won the trials, maintaining an average speed of 13.8 mph (22.2 km/h) for a modest consumption of coal and water.
Horses had been used to pull wagons on coal and mineral tramways and plateways for some years before this. Many of these tramways and plateways were arranged so that the line ran downhill from the mine to a river or coastal port. Loaded trains would descend under the power of gravity, with horses used to haul the empty trains back uphill.
Early examples with just one or two wagons together were pulled downhill by the horse, the horse also acting as brakes.[ citation needed ] Once improved mechanical brakes were available, longer trains of wagons could be controlled during their descent. The horses were carried downhill in a special dandy wagon, usually attached to the end of the run of loaded wagons. These dandy wagons were simple unpowered wagons, often with no more adaption for horses than special doors to load and unload the animals.
Horse locomotives were only used for a brief period between the development of passenger-carrying public railways and the provision of viable steam locomotives. Other horse-powered locomotives include the Flying Dutchman of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company, used briefly in 1830, and the Impulsoria , exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851.
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The Rainhill trials was an important competition run from the 6 to 14 October 1829, to test George Stephenson's argument that locomotives would have the best motive power for the then nearly-completed Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR). Five locomotives were entered, running along a 1 mile (1.6 km) length of level track at Rainhill, in Lancashire.
Stephenson's Rocket is an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), held in October 1829 to show that improved locomotives would be more efficient than stationary steam engines.
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Thomas Shaw Brandreth, FRS was an English mathematician, inventor and classicist.
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The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&M) opened on 15 September 1830. Work on the L&M had begun in the 1820s, to connect the major industrial city of Manchester with the nearest deep water port at the Port of Liverpool, 35 miles (56 km) away. Although horse-drawn railways already existed elsewhere, the Stockton and Darlington steam Railway had been running for five years, and a few industrial sites already used primitive steam locomotives for bulk haulage, the L&M was the first locomotive-hauled railway to connect two major cities, and the first to provide a scheduled passenger service. The opening day was a major public event. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the prime minister, rode on one of the eight inaugural trains, as did many other dignitaries and notable figures of the day. Huge crowds lined the track at Liverpool to watch the trains depart for Manchester.
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