the coal consumed was two hundredweightвЂ™. the engine, while working, went nearly five miles an hour there was no water put into the boiler from the time we started until our journeyвЂ™s end. The first run was on 21 February, and was described in some detail by Trevithick: вЂ.yesterday we proceeded on our journey with the engine, and we carried ten tons of iron in five wagons, and seventy men riding on them the whole of the journey. Tradition has it that Richard Crawshay, owner of the nearby Cyfarthfa ironworks, was highly sceptical about the new engine, and he and Homfray placed a wager of 500 guineas each with Richard Hill (of the Plymouth ironworks) as to whether or not the engine could haul ten tons of iron to Abercynon, and haul the empty wagons back.

It would appear that Trevithick started work on the locomotive in the autumn of 1803 and, by February 1804, it was completed. He encouraged Trevithick to look into the possibility of converting such an engine into a rail-mounted locomotive to travel over the newly laid tramroad from Penydarren to the canal wharf at Abercynon. Homfray was interested in the high pressure engines that the Cornishman had developed and installed in his road engines. In 1803, Samuel Homfray brought Richard Trevithick to his Penydarren ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. It was to be several years before steam locomotion became commercially viable, meaning that Richard Trevithick and not George Stephenson was the real father of the railways. On 21 February 1804, the worldвЂ™s first ever railway journey ran 9 miles from the ironworks at Penydarren to the MerthyrвЂ“Cardiff Canal, south Wales. Trevithick's Penydarren locomotive and tender at W.I.M.M.

Location engin rail route