'' Salamanca'' was the first commercially successful

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the loco ...

, built in 1812 by Matthew Murray of

Holbeck Holbeck is an inner city area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It begins on the southern edge of Leeds city centre and mainly lies in the LS11 postcode district. The M1 and M621 motorways used to end/begin in Holbeck. Now the M621 is th ...

, for the edge railed

Middleton Railway The Middleton Railway is the world's oldest continuously working railway, situated in the English city of Leeds. It was founded in 1758 and is now a heritage railway, run by volunteers from The Middleton Railway Trust Ltd. since 1960. The rail ...

between Middleton and

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popul ...

, England and it predated

Stephenson's Rocket 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 m ...

by 17 years. It was the first to have two cylinders. It was named after the Duke of Wellington's victory at the

battle of Salamanca The Battle of Salamanca (in French and Spanish known as the Battle of Arapiles) on 22July 1812 was a battle in which an Anglo-Portuguese army under the Earl of Wellington defeated Marshal Auguste Marmont's French forces at Arapiles, so ...

which was fought that same year. ''Salamanca'' was also the first

rack and pinion A rack and pinion is a type of linear actuator that comprises a circular gear (the '' pinion'') engaging a linear gear (the ''rack''). Together, they convert rotational motion into linear motion. Rotating the pinion causes the rack to be driven ...

locomotive, using

John Blenkinsop John Blenkinsop (1783 – 22 January 1831) was an English mining engineer and an inventor of steam locomotives, who designed the first practical railway locomotive. He was born in Felling, County Durham, the son of a stonemason and was app ...

's patented design for rack propulsion. A single rack ran outside the

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...

tracks and was engaged by a large cog wheel on the left side of the locomotive. The cog wheel was driven by twin cylinders embedded into the top of the centre-flue boiler. The class was described as having two 8"×20" cylinders, driving the wheels through cranks. The piston

crosshead In mechanical engineering, a crosshead is a mechanical joint used as part of the slider-crank linkages of long reciprocating engines (either internal combustion or steam) and reciprocating compressors to eliminate sideways force on the piston ...

s slid in guides, rather than being controlled by a parallel motion linkage like the majority of early locomotives. The engines saw up to twenty years of service. Middleton Colliery 1814

It appears in a watercolour by George Walker (1781–1856), the first painting of a steam locomotive. Four such locomotives were built for the railway. ''Salamanca'' was destroyed six years later, when its boiler exploded. According to George Stephenson, giving evidence to a committee of

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

, the driver had tampered with the boiler's safety valve. ''Salamanca'' is probably the locomotive referred to in the September 1814 edition of ''

Annals of Philosophy ''Annals of Philosophy; or, Magazine of Chemistry, Mineralology, Mechanics, Natural History, Agriculture and the Arts'' was a learned journal founded in 1813 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson. It shortly became a leader in its field of comme ...

'': "Some time ago a steam-engine was mounted upon wheels at Leeds, and made to move along a rail road by means of a rack wheel, dragging after it a number of waggons loaded with coals." The item continues to mention a rack locomotive about a mile north of Newcastle ( Blücher at Killingworth) and one without a rack wheel (probably Puffing Billy at Wylam). A model of the locomotive, built by Murray in 1811, is part of the collection held at

Leeds Industrial Museum The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills is a museum of industrial heritage located in Armley, near Leeds, in West Yorkshire, Northern England. The museum includes collections of textile machinery, railway equipment and heavy engineering amon ...

. It is the world's oldest model locomotive.

References

{{Steam engine configurations Rack and cog driven locomotives

Salamanca Salamanca () is a city in western Spain and is the capital of the Province of Salamanca in the autonomous community of Castile and León. The city lies on several rolling hills by the Tormes River. Its Old City was declared a UNESCO World Herit ...

English inventions

Narrow gauge locomotives