2792 x 3697 px | 23,6 x 31,3 cm | 9,3 x 12,3 inches | 300dpi
Date de la prise de vue:
2011
Informations supplémentaires:
George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. Renowned as being the "Father of Railways", the Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement, with self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praising his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 feet 81⁄2 inches (1, 435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge. Stephenson had ascertained by experiments at Killingworth that half of the power of the locomotive was consumed by a gradient as little as 1 in 260. He came to the conclusion that railways should be kept as level as possible. He used this knowledge while working on the Bolton and Leigh Railway, and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), executing a series of difficult cuts, embankments and stone viaducts to smooth the route the railways took. Defective surveying of the original route of the L&MR caused by the hostility of some of the affected landowners meant that Stephenson encountered difficulty during Parliamentary scrutiny of the original bill, especially under cross-examination by Edward Hall Alderson. The Bill was rejected. A revised bill with a new alignment was submitted and passed in a subsequent session. The revised alignment presented a considerable problem: the crossing of Chat Moss, an apparently bottomless peat bog, which Stephenson eventually overcame by unusual means, effectively floating the line across it. The method he used was almost exactly the same as that used by John Metcalf during his construction of many miles of road through marshes in the Pennines. He would lay a foundation of heather and branches bound together by the weight of the passing coaches with a layer of stones on top.
