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HISTORY OF LOCOMOTIVES

The history of the early days of the locomotive is closely related to the evolution of the automatic steam vehicle devised to circulate in the roads and later left aside after being developed the transport on tracks. The idea to tend a special pair of rails for the wheels of the load vehicles goes back to the time of the Romans, who were used to paving with stone blocks located in parallel channels the portion the road through where they passed the wheels .The same method was adopted frequently in the early times of the operation of the stone coal deposits in England, where this coal was transported from the mines in railroad cars drown by horses . Towards the 1630, nevertheless, an individual called Beaumont ran seating wood tracks with the same object; and by the end of XVIII century it was of current use railroads with wood tracks that had a cleared superior surface, adjusting to them the channeled rims of the iron wheels of the wagons; it also was appraised the advantage for the economy represented by the easier transportation ascending or descending the slopes, reducing the hills, filling up the depressions of the land and constructing bridges on the rivers.

Later the wood tracks were covered with strained iron plates, to extend their duration diminishing the wearing down, and in 1776 a railroad was constructed in Sheffield (United Kingdom) tending prismatic strained iron bars on wood beams. Starting off from these coarse principles, the modern railroad was developed, a road composed of parallel steel rails supported by ties and providing a track for locomotive-drawn trains or other wheeled vehicles , with its heavy woods resting on divided stone and maintaining prismatic steel tracks that weigh of 45 to 65 kilograms per meter, with all its complete cohort of auxiliary elements: nails , signals, dispositions for rescue, etc.

The locomotive in its childhood and its first vacillating steps .At the end of 18th. century , the steam engine became a real and positive factor in the industry, and different attempts had been made to apply it to the road vehicles. The merit to carry out the construction of the first locomotive that marched on tracks corresponds to Richard Trevithick, that, in February of 1804, used a locomovible machine to carry coal in the road of Penydarran, in South Wales , United Kingdom. The first locomotive used successfully .The locomotive of Trevithick , according to the most authorized references, was very similar to the attached figure in this page . The boiler was made of strained iron with inner furnace, and the products of the combustion were directed to a chimney located in the same end of the mouth of the firebox . The steam engine, that is to say, the cylinder with the piston, was arranged vertically, and the connecting bars represented in the figure by the D, that acted as a connecting rod, and the L, connected with the motor axis.

The steam, after having operated, escaped by the chimney to increase the shot, and this system it depended on the friction of the driving wheels on the tracks to assure sufficient traction power . The pressure of the steam was about 40 pounds by square inch; so that strictly speaking it was a machine of high pressure. The safety valve, E , prevented an excessive pressure in the boiler. This locomotive worked well, but its economic results were not satisfactory .The following successful attempt to obtain a steam locomotive was done by Blenk in sop in 1812. This machine, as it appears in the corresponding figure , had two cylinders of 203 millimeters of diameter each one and arranged vertically , like in the machine of Trevithick.