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Steam Trains: From Stephenson's Rocket to BR's Evening Star
Steam Trains From Stephenson's Rocket to BR's Evening Star Author:Colin Maggs Most people are under a misapprehension: the Rocket was not the first steam engine. Quite a few were built before it, but Stephenson's engine was the first successful steam locomotive. — Colin Maggs tells the history of the steam engine from pre-Rocket days to British Railways building Evening Star, the last main line locomotive, through to the p... more »reservation movement and even discusses new-build locomotives of extinct classes such as the Tornado.
This is also the story of the rolling stock, the 'train'. The early first-class coaches were based on a stagecoach design, while some second-class coaches had no glass in the windows and passengers wore fine-gauge goggles to avoid getting cinders in their eyes. Third-class coaches were merely open trucks ? after all, why not travel in the open as passengers had done on the outside of a stagecoach?« less