Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the first train invented?
James Watt, a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, greatly improved the steam engine of Thomas Newcomen, hitherto used to pump water out of mines. Watt developed a reciprocating engine in 1769, capable of powering a wheel. Although the Watt engine powered cotton mills and a variety of machinery, it was a large stationary engine. It could not be otherwise: the state of boiler technology necessitated the use of low pressure steam acting upon a vacuum in the cylinder; this required a separate condenser and an air pump. Nevertheless, as the construction of boilers improved, Watt investigated the use of high-pressure steam acting directly upon a piston. This raised the possibility of a smaller engine, that might be used to power a vehicle and he patented a design for a steam locomotive in 1784. His employee William Murdoch produced a working model of a self-propelled steam carriage in that year.
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built in the United Kingdom in 1804 by Richard Trevithick, a British engineer born in Cornwall. This used high-pressure steam to drive the engine by one power stroke. The transmission system employed a large flywheel to even out the action of the piston rod. On 21 February 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. Trevithick later demonstrated a locomotive operating upon a piece of circular rail track in Bloomsbury, London, the "Catch Me Who Can", but never got beyond the experimental stage with railway locomotives, not least because his engines were too heavy for the cast-iron plateway track then in use.
The first commercially successful steam locomotive was Matthew Murray's rack locomotive "Salamanca" built for the Middleton Railway in Leeds in 1812. This twin-cylinder locomotive was not heavy enough to break the edge-rails track and solved the problem of adhesion by a cog-wheel using teeth cast on the side of one of the rails. Thus it was also the first rack railway.
The railroad currently has three steam locomotives, as well as a diesel locomotive in regular service, along with several other locomotives of both types. Most of the railroad's engines are geared steam locomotives. These specialized types of steam engines — Shay locomotives, Heisler locomotives, Climax locomotives, and a Willamette locomotive were used in the early 20th century for logging. Compared to conventional steam locomotives, geared locomotives were better-suited for the steep grades, sharp curves and uneven profiles of hastily laid track typical of logging operations. Thus, the MRRR seeks to preserve and operate historic geared locomotives and related logging technology in order to present visitors with a sense of a bygone logging era critical to the development of the Pacific Northwest.
The Whyte notation for classifying steam locomotives by wheel arrangement was devised by Frederick Methvan Whyte, and came into use in the early twentieth century following a December 1900 editorial in "American Engineer and Railroad Journal". The notation counts the number of leading wheels, then the number of driving wheels, and finally the number of trailing wheels, groups of numbers being separated by dashes. Other classification schemes, like UIC classification and the French, Turkish and Swiss systems for steam locomotives, count axles rather than wheels.
The Northern Pacific Railway was the first railroad to order a 2-8-8-4. The first was built in 1928 by American Locomotive Company; at the time, it was the largest locomotive ever built. It had the largest firebox ever applied to a steam locomotive, some in area, to burn Rosebud coal, a cheap low-quality coal. But the firebed was too large for the available draft and the fire burned poorly. The problem was mitigated by blocking off the first few feet of the grates. Baldwin Locomotive Works built 11 more for the Northern Pacific in 1930. None were saved.
In time the Canal became overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and encouraged by the successful opening of railways with more advanced technology than the horse tramways of previous years, the Taff Vale Railway was promoted. It was authorised by Parliament in 1836 and it opened between Merthyr and Cardiff docks in 1841. The line passed close to the Maesmawr workings but did not make a connection.
One possible reason for this difference in design principles between American and European carbuilding practice could be the average distance between stations on the two continents. While most European railroads connected towns and villages that were still very closely spaced, American railroads had to travel over much greater distances to reach their destinations. Building passenger cars with a long passageway through the length of the car allowed the passengers easy access to the restroom, among other things, on longer journeys.
Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph, the first device for recording and playing back sound, in 1877. After patenting the invention and benefiting from the publicity and acclaim it received, Edison and his laboratory turned their attention to the commercial development of electric lighting, playing no further role in the development of the phonograph for nearly a decade. Edison's original phonograph recorded on sheets of tinfoil and was little more than a crude curiosity, although one that fascinated much of the public. These earliest phonographs were sold mainly to entrepreneurs who made a living out of traveling around the country giving "educational" lectures in hired halls or otherwise demonstrating the device to audiences for a fee. The tinfoil phonograph was not fit for any real practical use and public interest soon waned.
In 1895 he successfully experimented with a water velocipede on the rivers Leine and Ihme near Hanover. As early as 1899 he exhibited a small car at the First International Exhibition in Berlin. Between 1901 and 1903 Wenkel travelled through East India, Java, Sumatra and Borneo, where he built the first Wenkelmobils in rather primitive conditions. When back in Germany, the Berlin factory of Schneider & Co started the production of his Wenkelmobil. Wenkel won numerous prizes with it in races in its small-car class. In 1906 and 1907 he travelled the length of South America down to Patagonia in a Wenkelmobil. He was officially commissioned to open up the Cordillera region for motor traffic, and also built flat-bottomed speed boats suitable for Argentine rivers. Wenkel acquired several patents, e.g. for the Wenkelmobil’s friction drive and a high-speed compression and vacuum pump. The Berlin Directory lists him as engineer and owner of a technical bureau and export firm during World War I. When well over sixty he won the prestigious Garbaty Trophy with his speedboat "Java II", in 1929. Three years later he was still making his mark with the invention of a "motor in a trunk car", a newfangled though unsuccessful miniature automobile. An article in a boys’ yearbook in 1943 suggests that Wenkel died in that year, but his precise date of death has yet to be confirmed.
On 11 October 1883, a convention of railroad executives met in Chicago and agreed to the implementation of five time zones in North America, using as a basis Greenwich Mean Time. Before the invitations to the Washington conference were sent out on December 1, the joint efforts of Abbe, Fleming and William Frederick Allen, Secretary of the US railways' "General Time Convention" and Managing Editor of the "Travellers' Official Guide to the Railways", had brought the US railway companies to an agreement which led to standard railway time being introduced at noon on 18 November 1883 across the nation. Although this was not legally established until 1918, there was thus a strong sense of "fait accompli" that preceded the Washington conference, although setting local times was not part of the remit of the conference.
In 1878, George B. Selden patented the first internal combustion automobile. Inspired by the internal combustion engine invented by Brayton displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, Selden patented a four-wheel car working on a smaller, lighter, multicylinder version. He then filed a series of amendments to his application which stretched out the legal process, resulting in a delay of 16 years before the patent was granted on November 5, 1895. In 1903, Selden sued Ford for patent infringement and Henry Ford fought the Selden patent until 1911. Selden had never actually produced a working car, so during the trial, two machines were constructed according to the patent drawings. Ford argued his cars used the four-stroke Alphonse Beau de Rochas cycle or Otto cycle and not the Brayton-cycle engine used in the Selden auto. Ford won the appeal of the original case.
The importance of the escapement in the history of technology is that it was the key invention that made the all-mechanical clock possible. The invention of the first all-mechanical escapement, the verge escapement, in 13th-century Europe initiated a change in timekeeping methods from continuous processes, such as the flow of water in water clocks, to repetitive oscillatory processes, such as the swing of pendulums, which could yield more accuracy. Oscillating timekeepers are used in every modern clock.
This was the first railway line to be opened on the island in 1873 and was operational continually until September 1968, with the exception of 1966 when the entire network was closed. The line is today retained as a footpath and bridleway and is 11.5 miles long. Since the rails were lifted in 1975, there has often been talk of resurrecting this line, which out of the closed lines would be the most viable. Since closure there have been several service mains buried under the trackbed, including gas and telephone mains, but pains are always taken to ensure that the trackbed is returned in such a way that the railway could be reinstated. There are two notable examples of this, firstly at Quarterbridge where the railway ran parallel to the T.T. course where an access road was built on the trackbed in 1991, and secondly at the station of St John's where a primary school and housing complex have been developed since 2001. Both of these developments have been built in such a way to ensure the line could be reinstated, albeit that any station at St John's would have to be significantly relocated. During the First World War there was a branch extending from a mid-way point between Peel and St John's stations to the farm of Knockaloe in connection with prisoners of war who were interned there. The stations are listed to the right. At the terminus of Peel a large heritage centre has been built, partly using the old goods shed and station building. The brickworks office and water tower remain in place at the mouth of the yard and are occupied by the Manx Transport Museum Group, and the station site itself is now a car park for the heritage centre. It would not be unfeasible however to reinstate some form of station here in the future as needs required.
When the Finnish rail network was founded in 1862, Finland was the Grand Duchy of Finland, a region of Imperial Russia. The first border crossing railway to Russia was opened in 1870, while the first to Sweden was not until 1919, so railways were built to the broad Russian track gauge of . In Russia, this gauge was re-standardized to during the 1960s. Finland retained the original gauge with no re-standardisation.
American Morse Code — also known as Railroad Morse—is the latter-day name for the original version of the Morse Code developed in the mid-1840s, by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail for their electric telegraph. The "American" qualifier was added because, after most of the rest of the world adopted "International Morse Code," the companies that continued to use the original Morse Code were mainly located in the United States. American Morse is now nearly extinct—it is most frequently seen in American railroad museums and American Civil War reenactments—and "Morse Code" today virtually always means the International Morse which supplanted American Morse.
The Silver Bullet Express, also known as the Sunday River Ski Train, was a privately owned and operated ski train that ran from Portland, Maine to Sunday River Ski Resort near Bethel, Maine. The ski train was owned by Sunday River and sponsored by Coors Light. The train left Portland at 6:45 am, arriving in Bethel at 8:45 am where passengers transferred to Buses which would take them to the mountain. The return trip would depart Bethel at 5:15 pm. Amenities included a dining car, parlor car, and a retrofitted boxcar for carrying skis and snowboards. It operated from 1993 until 1996.
CRRC manufactures most of its bullet train carriages at its factory in Changchun. In November 2016, CRCC Changchun unveiled the first bullet train carriages in the world with sleeper berths, thus extending their use for overnight passages across China. They would be capable of running in ultra low temperature environments. Nicknamed "Panda", the new bullet trains are capable of running at 250 kmph, operate at -40 degrees Celsius, have Wi-Fi hubs and contain sleeper berths that fold into seats during the day.
Until the development of the steamboat, transportation of goods on major rivers was generally accomplished either with barges or flatboats, floated downstream or pushed upstream with poles or by hand using overhanging tree limbs. On the Mississippi River, most shipping was down river on log rafts or wooden boats that were dismantled and sold as lumber in the vicinity of New Orleans. Steam-powered river navigation began in 1811-12, between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New Orleans. Inland steam navigation rapidly expanded in the following decades. Railroads appeared before the Civil War, though at first were used to link waterways. After the Civil War, railroads took over most of the hauling of goods.
The main public transport in major cities is the bus. Many cities also have a diverse system of metro and subway trains, the first of which was the Buenos Aires subte, opened 1913. The Santiago subway is the largest network in South America, with 103 km, while the São Paulo subway is the largest in transportation, with more than 4.6 million passengers per day and was voted the best in the Americas. In Rio de Janeiro was installed the first railroad of the continent, in 1854. Today the city has a vast and diversified system of metropolitan trains, integrated with buses and subway. Recently it was also inaugurated in the city a Light Rail System called VLT, a small electrical trams at low speed, while São Paulo inaugurated its monorail, the first of South America. In Brazil, an express bus system called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which operates in several cities, has also been developed.
The most famous steam locomotive operating on the British main line is the 1923 built "Flying Scotsman". After being taken into public ownership in 2004, following a decade long refit it returned to mainline service in 2016. The fastest steam locomotive ever built, the 1938 built "Mallard", was also certified for main line operation briefly in the 1980s.
The first American 2-8-4s were built for the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1925 by Lima Locomotive Works. The railroad's route across the Berkshire mountains was a substantial test for the new locomotives and, as a result, the name "Berkshire" was adopted for the locomotive type.
In 1937, the management of the Southern Railway, which had responsibility for the Waterloo & City Line, began the process of procuring new rolling stock. Despite the advent of World War II, this was too far advanced to be halted, and the new trains were delivered from the English Electric factory at Preston during 1940, officially entering service on 28 October of that year. The trains remained in service through the nationalisation of the Southern as part of British Rail in 1948, when the Waterloo & City became part of the Southern Region, and then "Sectorisation" as part of the London & South Eastern sector (renamed "Network SouthEast" in 1986). Under the Total Operations Processing System introduced in the late 1960s, the units were initially classed as Class 453, before being renumbered as Class 487. These trains were finally replaced upon the procurement of 10 new sets in 1993.
Matthew Murray of Leeds built the first commercially successful steam locomotive ("Salamanca") in 1812. The Doncaster Works at Hexthorpe built Britain's most famous steam trains, for the GNR, then LNER (from 1923). The Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electric railway was the UK's longest electrified railway in 1953 when opened. What is now West Yorkshire in the nineteenth century was the heart of Britain's woollen weaving wills, often using Alpaca fiber and by connections to the important Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Joseph Bramah of Barnsley was important in the development of hydraulics, and also developed the hydraulic press in 1795 and in 1778 the flush toilet.
Joseph Aspdin from Leeds invented Portland cement in 1824; when mixed with aggregates and sand, this produced concrete. John Smeaton was a famous civil engineer from Leeds, and notable for building the first modern-day lighthouse (Eddystone Lighthouse) and for developing hydraulic lime (it is able to set under water), which would lead to cement. Sir Donald Bailey (civil engineer), of Rotherham, invented the Bailey bridge which was important in the later stages of the Second World War for crossing rivers; the design took place in 1940 at the Experimental Bridging Establishment in Christchurch, Dorset (Hampshire before 1974).
Ɯ was used in the Zhuang alphabet from 1957 to 1986 to represent the same vowel as in IPA; sometime before or in 1986, it was replaced with W.
The first steam-powered and first electric-powered model trains were both invented in Paterson. Eugene Beggs made the first steam-powered train in the city around 1871. Beggs' employee, Jehu Garlick, invented the first electric-powered model train that consisted of a tinplate toy locomotive with four aluminum wheels. "Toy World" which highlights the history of New Jersey's toy making industry at the New Jersey State Museum prominently featured Paterson's contribution to the history of toys.
Sometimes inventions and ideas may seem to arise spontaneously while daydreaming, especially when the mind is free from its usual concerns. For example, both J. K. Rowling (the creator of Harry Potter) and Frank Hornby (the inventor of Meccano) first had their ideas while on train journeys.