Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his discourse on the development of the steam locomotive.

Stephenson’s behemoth, (The Rocket) nevertheless, despite its failure in the beauty contest, when asked to, merrily chugged up and down the approved course, day after day, repeatedly demonstrating its reliability, pulling power and speed.

When the Monday of the second week came, Hackworth’s ‘Sans Pareil’ was back in the fray, at least for about two hours.  The failure of a water pump ended its chances when no one could be found to repair the damage.  To add to its troubles, the judges found that the weight of the engine was outside the rules and they promptly disqualified it!

The ‘Novelty’, having been taken apart and put back together again in four days, re-entered the trial on the Wednesday.  It went around the course twice, fully loaded, before, (alas) a boiler pipe burst.  To repair this damage in the allotted time was impossible, so the ‘Novelty’ was withdrawn.

The ‘Rocket’, surrounded on all sides by hastily repaired machinery which coughed and spluttered and died repeatedly, demonstrated again and again its capacity to haul itself, fully loaded up an incline at at least twice the speed of any stationary engine.  For the duration of the trials, ‘Rocket’, without a single breakdown, covered a distance of at least 70 miles whilst fulfilling every requirement laid down by the competition.  Its performance also proved conclusively that locomotives and not stationary engines (or indeed, horses) were the only suitable form of power for the new Liverpool-Manchester line.

The shameful bias of the Mechanics’ Magazine continued…
‘…the ‘Novelty’…as soon as it is repaired…and but for the accidents it unfortunately met with…it will accomplish…the tasks assigned to it…’

The magazine then proceeds to cast aspersions on the judges;
‘…it appears that… the judges have had only the name and not the power of judges… the Directors reserving to themselves the power of deciding which is best entitled to the premium…’

This ungenerous attitude continues on for another four or five hundred words, and includes the astonishing statements that;
‘…the ‘Novelty’ is the sort of engine that will be found best adapted to the purposes of the railway…’ and that the ‘Sans Pareil’ ‘…is at least as good an engine as the  ‘Rocket…’
before it is forced to admit that the ‘Rocket’ has utterly outperformed its rivals..

Almost all of this disgraceful bias may be explained when it is understood that the ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’ was based in London and was run by professional engineers, quite a few of whom had, from time to time, felt the sharp end of George Stephenson’s tongue.  There was William James who had failed to finish his survey of the Liverpool-Manchester line and Charles Vignoles whom Stephenson had rejected as his assistant.  These two alone were easily enough to influence the magazine’s anti-Stephenson outpourings.

Happily, the world did not stop or go on the word of this petty magazine.  The results of the trials were very quickly relayed around the world and orders were arriving thick and fast at the Robert Stephenson Newcastle works.  Four locos were immediately ordered for the Liverpool line.  Oddly one anti-Stephenson member of the Liverpool board, Mr James Cropper, managed to include an order for two of the ‘Novelty’ engines.  This little triumph enraptured all at the Mechanics’ Magazine, but only for a little while.  Both engines, for reasons not immediately available to us, failed their tests and were rejected.

Hmmm…curiouser and curiouser…

TO BE CONTINUED . .  .  .

“Anzackery. Is there a better term today to challenge political leaders, officials, national institutions and journalists who perpetuate the absurd proposition that nationhood emerged not amid 60,000 years of continuous Indigenous settlement or even at federation, but with 8700 Australian deaths under a British flag at Gallipoli?” writes Paul Daley in the Guardian.

Click this link to view the article

[Anzackery is the term coined by Geoffery Serle in a 1967 Meanjin article]

More on George Stephenson by Tarquin O’Flaherty

George Stephenson

It is extraordinary how, in the first half of the 19^th century, the reputable, and entirely respectable British engineering establishment set itself against George Stephenson.  Stephenson lacked polish.  He also had an almost impenetrable ‘Geordie’ accent and no recognised engineering qualifications whatever.  He was also inclined on occasion to behave in a less than deferential way towards respectable engineers whom he considered to be incompetents.

Stephenson unfortunately possessed one other quality which the establishment simply could neither accept or forgive; this was, of course his embarrassing habit of solving problems other engineers had dismissed as wholly intractable.  This was absolutely intolerable.  The Rainhill trials seemed the perfect opportunity to put this coarse upstart in his place.

One of the most popular and widely read journals of the day was the ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’ which was, if not the official organ of the engineering establishment, then it was closely associated with it. The reporter on the day had the following to say:
‘The engine which made the first trial was the Rocket…it is a large and strongly built engine, and went with a velocity which as long as the spectators had nothing to contrast it with, they thought surprising enough.  It drew a weight of twelve tons, nine cwt. at the rate of ten miles, four chains in an hour (just exceeding the stipulated maximum) and when the weights were detached from it, went at a speed of about 18 miles per hour. The faults… were a great inequality in its velocity and only…a partial [ability] to consume its own smoke’. 

What this reportage fails to do is honestly acknowledge that the Rocket had fulfilled every condition of the test, both loaded and unloaded, without any mishap whatever.  It is interesting and curious to note that there is an ungenerous, pinched and carping quality in this journalist’s ‘Rocket’ writing which occurs nowhere else.

By contrast, this same reporter goes into raptures of delight in his reporting on the performance of the ‘Novelty’:
‘…the great lightness of the engine…its beautiful workmanship…universal admiration…its truly marvellous performances…’
‘It was resolved to try first her speed merely…almost at once it darts off at the amazing velocity of 28 miles an hour…’
‘…It was now proposed to make a trial of the ‘Novelty’ with three times its weight attached to it; but through some inattention to the supply of water and coke, a great delay…[made it necessary to] defer the prosecution of the trial to the following day…’ 

The magazine, with barely concealed bias, is unfairly comparing an unloaded “Novelty’ ‘…darting off… ’ at 28 mph, with a fully loaded ‘Rocket’ hauling its stipulated tonnage along the set course.

The Novelty,  ‘…through some inattention to the supply of water and coke…’ could not perform the weight-pulling part of the test the next morning, or any part of that day.  In fact it did not recover ‘…its marvellous performance…’  until the following Saturday where it managed to travel for three miles before damaging one of its steam pipes and coming to a halt.  Nevertheless, despite these problems, the ‘Novelty’, simply by its appearance, was a real crowd pleaser and most of the spectators wanted it to win.  By comparison, the Rocket was a behemoth, huge, unattractive and smelly.

To Be Continued (TOMORROW – HOPEFULLY)

THE MAN FROM ALABAMA
OUR WHITE AUSTRALIA POLICY

An Australian poem by “J. Sweeney”

When dark Joe from Alabama met a girl from La Perouse,
They agreed upon a good time in the parks and at the Zoo.
Debating love and marriage and changes war would bring,
He stole his arm around her and offered her the ring.

She said:”To fall for your desires is something I’ll never do,
To disgrace my friends and relatives around by La Perouse,
You must know the picaninnies would be brindle, black or brown,
Then our White Australia policy would surely topple down.

“We won’t accept the Chinaman or tolerate the Japs,
And if we mate with black men, won’t our policy collapse?
I’ll wed a dinkum Aussie,and to him I will be true,
And help our White Australia around by La Perouse.”

Pausing for a moment, he said: “I know what I will do,
I’ll go home to Alabama, to the sweetest girl I know,
And when the war is over, it’s there we’ll settle down,
Then your White Australia policy won’t topple to the ground.”

James Sweeney was born in the West of Ireland in 1875. He came to Australia in 1930 and was one of a few to make his living by his verse between the wars. Unlike most poets, his book ‘Original Australian Verse’ was republished and expanded several times.  He returned to Ireland at the end of the Hitler war.  Nothing else is known of him.

He wrote in the tradition of Patterson and the bush ballad.  In my opinion he did this very badly.  He was a poor versifier, maudlin and sentimental, with little to say.  He was however,  popular in his time as his work was in regular demand.  This, I think, tells us as much about his audience as it does about the man himself.
Ira Maine, Poetry Editor

George Stephenson

George Stephenson a Lunatic?  Perhaps Stephenson “shot himself in the foot”. Tarquin O’Flaherty explains.

An important point here, one I should have perhaps made earlier, was that right from  the outset it was intended that this new railway would carry passengers.  This is why the committee is so concerned about speed and safety. The truth doesn’t matter here. What matters here is the public’s perception of the truth, their belief that trains will shake themselves to pieces if they travel too quickly.  They needed to be reassured on these points and George Stephenson really wasn’t helping.

George continued down this disastrous path when his technical competence was called in to question.  When asked how wide a river was, or how many arches would support  his proposed bridge over that river his answers were so vague as to provoke derision.  It is impossible to know at this distance why Stephenson went before this committee so ill-prepared.  He appeared not to know where his base line for the levels was drawn, and when a Mr William Cubitt was asked, (Cubitt had been hired to independently check the quoted levels) he was forced to say that a great deal of Stephenson’s levels were wrong.

This level of questioning went on for days, driven by the opposition’s need to destroy forever the possibility of the railway being built.  In George Stephenson they found the perfect foil.  It would appear that he had hired others to carry out some work on the levels, and it was this incompetent work that the opposition had seized on.  This work had been less than careful.  Not only that; the work had not once been checked for accuracy.

And then there was Chat Moss.  Everybody knew that Chat Moss was a four mile long bottomless swamp that had been swallowing horses and houses for centuries.  Yet Stephenson proposed ‘floating’ a railway across it by means of man-made islands.  The opposition seized on this ‘island’ notion as another indicator of Stephenson’s unhinged thinking, and they set about making him a laughing stock, a person wholly unfit to deal responsibly with the huge sums of money  this enterprise required.  Stephenson, humiliated, had no answers, at least none the committee required.  He was not a performer.  He was an engineer.  To get a bill through parliament needed sophistication. George had none and the bill was lost.  To add to his miseries the Liverpool-Manchester board was forced to sack him.  They promptly set about finding a replacement.

TO BE CONTINUED

Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his account of the birth of steam powered rail, in which some people accuse Stephenson of being a lunatic

By the beginning of 1825, George Stephenson had produced his completed Liverpool to Manchester survey, together with a comprehensive listing of all costs, which included engines and all rolling stock. The entire estimate came to 400,000 pounds. This was 100,000 pounds more than had been suggested in the uncompleted James survey. Despite this the committee not only accepted the figure, but almost immediately announced their intention to pursue a parliamentary bill.

On all sides, for and against, a blizzard of propaganda was launched.  Locomotive demonstrations were organised at Killingworth to show both the strength, speed and reliability of the latest Stephenson engines.  Not to be outdone, the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company loaded horse-drawn barges at Liverpool and made the round trip to Manchester, and back again, including unloading, in 24 hours.  They had also, at last realizing the potential threat to their monopoly, reduced their fees by twenty five per cent.

For a respectable passage through parliament, the shareholders for this vast railway enterprise needed to be equally respectable.  There were nearly 350 in all.  Many of these were solid business people from Liverpool and comprised the biggest block of 164 shareholders.  Amazingly, London, rather than Manchester had an almost comparable amount with 126.  Manchester made up the numbers with 54.  This very respectable level of investment would certainly ease the passage of the bill through parliament and certainly augered well for the future of railways in general.

In the beginning local councils didn’t want locomotives belching steam and smoke in the cities. That is why most of the major stations in England’s cities, like London’s Euston and Paddington stations terminate way outside the city centres.

‘…the vilest nuisance that ever the town had experienced…’ was said of the approaching horror at a Council meeting in Liverpool.

The Liverpool Mercury was concerned about ‘…the vomiting forth of long black smoke at places of rendezvous for the engines…’

Considering how polluted and murky the atmosphere already was in the cities with their ‘…dark, satanic mills…’ I hardly think a bit more would have made much difference!

The debate on this momentous bill began in parliament in March 1825.  Naturally the opposition, using expert engineers, had been studying Stephenson’s figures and plans in minute detail for weeks.  The canal and river lobby were extremely vociferous.  They had the most to lose should the railway prove successful.  There was also the powerful landed aristocracy, some of whom had their fortunes tied up in canals and waterways which already traversed their land.  Allowing this threat to their investments to get up would be like cutting their own throats.

When the bill got to the committee stage, several hundred objections immediately demanded attention.  These objections alone, the examination of which began on the 21^st of March took weeks of the committee’s time, but were finally cleared by the 31^st of May.

George Stephenson was called on the 25^th of April and proved a total disaster.  Advised by his own counsel not, when asked, to exaggerate speeds, carrying capacities etc for fear of frightening his conservative audience, Stephenson couldn’t help himself.  Advised to say that speeds would not be in excess of 4 mph (when he knew the trains could travel at twenty) he suggested innocently that higher speeds than 4mph might be possible.  The opposition’s counsel seized on this immediately, and promptly jacked up the ‘higher speeds’ to 12mph.  Intelligent, rational opinion of the day truly believed that a train travelling at this breakneck speed would literally disintegrate, and kill all on board.  Only madmen, people ‘fit for Bedlam’ believed this would not happen.  This made Stephenson, in some people’s eyes, a lunatic. And this was only the beginning.

Barry Spurr, former professor of poetry at Sydney University had a role in formulating our current governments review of the school curriculum.  Chris Graham wrote in The Guardian of his influence:

“. . . Sydney University announced that its professor of poetry, Barry Spurr, had resigned from his post. I have to admit that I couldn’t give much of a bugger.

On the one hand, I do genuinely believe that Spurr has a right to earn a living. He seems to have been widely regarded as a good and effective lecturer and professor.

On the other, can you imagine how a female student, an Asian student, a Muslim student – or, God forbid, an Aboriginal student – might feel sitting in a lecture theatre listening to him wax lyrical about the power of Judeo-Christian literature?

Clearly, Spurr’s position at the University of Sydney was tenuous.

But this story has never been about Spurr’s tenure as a professor. It has always been about the “nod, nod, wink, wink” racism of people who hold positions of great power and influence over us all. Notably, Spurr has never acknowledged wrongdoing, let alone apologised.

Thus, the “real story” has always been his role as a special consultant to the Abbott government’s review of the national school curriculum.

On that front, nothing has changed.

Despite the emergence of these repugnant emails, the federal minister for education, Christopher Pyne, remains happy with the final report into the review of the National School Curriculum. Go figure.

In case you’re wondering, here’s an example from Spurr’s report of the sort of advice for which Australian taxpayers forked out thousands of dollars:

As usual, the literature of Western civilisation at large is omitted, while the specific ‘oral narrative traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ are singled out for mention.

And this:

The impact of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on literature in English in Australia has been minimal and is vastly outweighed by the impact of global literature in English, and especially that from Britain, on our literary culture.

Now here’s just one of Spurr’s private views, revealed in his email correspondence.

Whereas the [Australian] curriculum has the phrase ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ on virtually every one of its 300 pages, the Californian curriculum does not ONCE mention native Americans and has only a very slight representation of African-American literature (which, unlike Abo literature, actually exists and has some distinguished productions).

It’s only hard to reconcile the difference between the two views if you accept that Spurr was, as he asserts, playing a “whimsical linguistic game”. Of course, the full transcript of his emails reveals he wasn’t.

Like all accomplished racists and misogynists, Spurr knew that he had to tailor his bigotry for public consumption. Overt and ugly racism is for bogans (ironically a group for which Spurr holds a special disdain). But polished, slippery racism? That is for professors. And institutions.

Spurr’s attempts to entrench his bigoted views in the school curriculum – that will be taught to every child in every school in every state of the country, for at least a generation – should send a shiver down the spine of every Australian parent.

Ask yourself this question: do you really want people of this calibre influencing what your children will learn in school?

The review of the national school curriculum will always be tainted. It has been irrevocably polluted by the views of a man who believes rape is funny, who believes Aboriginal people are sub-human, who believes Asians and Muslims are fodder for mockery, and who believes that women do not occupy a place of equality in our society.

These are not Australian values, but unless the curriculum review is revisited as a matter of urgency, then we can only assume that they are Australian government values.

Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his account of the rise of steam railways in the UK, and the role the cotton industry played.

At the behest of the Colombian Mining Co., a London company, Robert Stephenson spent three years (1824-1827) in South America.  During this period, William James, who had earlier carried out a survey of the proposed Liverpool-Manchester line with the aforementioned Robert, was so distracted by other demands of business that he spectacularly failed to produce the results of this survey to his backers, who were largely cotton manufacturers.  This became such a bone of contention that James was eventually dismissed and George Stephenson hired in his place.

In the 18^th century, most cotton used in England had come from either Turkey or the West Indies.  The cotton arrived at the port of London and was then delivered laboriously by wagon to the Lancashire mills.  With the astonishing growth of business in Liverpool and Manchester this supply was barely adequate, and an alternative source of supply was sought in America.  The great advantage of this abundant new source was that the cotton now arrived directly at the port of Liverpool and could be shipped by river or canal to Manchester.  This gave the carriers, the watermen, an almost absolute monopoly over transport.   Exorbitant fees were charged, cotton was stolen, (the weight made up with water) and bales of cotton were left for weeks at a time on the docks, awaiting the pleasure of the boatmen.  All of these shenannigans contributed to greatly increased costs to the cotton industry and hurried along their increasing interest in railways.

From the absolute beginning, the railways met with fierce opposition.  Landowners refused permission to have something cross their property which would cause cows to abort, women to faint, and the land to be suffocated with noise and smoke.  It would panic sheep, cause horses to drop down dead and birds to fall out of the sky.  Posters were placed in strategic spots showing half-starved, out of work horses as a result of the new ‘Iron Horse’ (an English term, by the way, as is the word ‘railroad’).

When George Stephenson carried out his new survey, he had to do it by stealth.  Gangs of youths, encouraged by the anti-railway propaganda, pelted his team with stones.  Others simply came and harangued the surveyors for ‘doing the devil’s work’.  Equipment was mysteriously smashed and individuals intimidated.  Undoubtedly, the bargees, the watermen, whose monopolies were under threat, were behind a great deal of this abuse, as were.to a lesser degree, the ‘turnpike’ or toll road keepers.  Eventually, the only way the work could be completed was by doing it at night or by employing their own people to create diversions (fires, gunshots, explosions, etc).

In May, 1824, George Stephenson was appointed engineer on the Liverpool-Manchester line.  This necessitated a move to Liverpool.  At the same time he was asked to consult, survey and advise on many other real or proposed lines all around the country.  He was also building new and improved locomotives, whilst still overseeing the completion of the Darlington line.  In a word, Stephenson was becoming a successful, and very busy businessman.

George Stephenson has managed to put his partner William Losh off-side by favouring a competitors wrought iron rails to Lush’s cast rails.   Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his story.

Such was the animosity generated at the Losh Ironworks by this sudden switch to the new rails and the consequent loss of business that Losh and Stephenson didn’t speak to each other for years, and when Stephenson did need cast-iron rails he had to go much further afield, to Wales, to get them.

Something should be understood here of the makeup and character of George Stephenson.  His behaviour towards William Losh was not an abberation.  Time and time again, people whom he no longer deemed useful, people who had gone out of their way to help him in the past, he simply turned his back on.  Stephenson knew what he wanted, was ruthless in obtaining it, and did not suffer fools.  Though a brilliant, self taught engineer he was nevertheless, a rough diamond, constantly coming up against smoother, ‘middle-class’ individuals who tended perhaps, to patronise him, particularly as he maintained both his broad, almost impenetrable ‘Geordie’ accent, and his brusque mode of ‘plain speaking’.  To discover that these intimidating ‘smoothies’, his supposed superiors, understood much less of engineering(and the world in general) than he himself did, must have been particularly galling.  He had, by providing  Robert with a sound education ensured his son’s ascendancy, his position in society, something, with his own background, he could never have achieved for himself.  He was delighted and inordinately proud when in 1822 Robert obtained a six month placing at Edinburgh University.

Time passed and the Stockton-Darlington line was successfully forging ahead.  Robert had returned from the Liverpool-Manchester survey and had worked with his father on many projects, including the Darlington line, and the initial parliamentary lobbying in London.  It is significant to note here that during this time, father and son, backed by the Quaker Edward Pease, and joined by Michael Longridge, the owner of the Bedlington Ironworks (producer of the wrought iron rails) formed their own company to manufacture their own locomotives.  Remarkably, the young 19 year old Robert was made managing director and entrusted with the job of setting the manufactory up, taking on suitable staff and preparing the ground for the building of two locomotives which his father had ordered for the Darlington line.  The business, set up at Forth Street, Newcastle, was called The Robert Stephenson Company.  The locomotives were to be called the ‘Locomotion’ and the ‘Hope’.

In 1824, at the grand opening of the Stockton-Darlington line, many new and interested groups attended representing other proposed new railways, including the Liverpool-Manchester and the Leeds-Hull, amongst others.  A greater interest in railways, if not yet direct investment,was becoming more widespread.  The only person who was noticeably absent from this grand affair was young Robert Stephenson.  This remarkable young man, too long in the shadow of his father, had struck out on his own.  He had taken ship to South America.

For many years, tales of Cortez, Montezuma and the Aztecs, spectacular riches and gold and silver for the taking had circulated freely round the Empire and had inspired more than one expedition to the New World.  Ten years earlier, in about 1814, Richard Trevithick, that inspired but wayward locomotive inventor, had joined one such expedition to the New World and had been waved off with great pomp and fanfare.  He went there to introduce his revolutionary railway system to a breathlessly awaiting world, a system which would undoubtedly play a major part in helping to first mine and then haul out fabulous riches from this too generous South American earth.  The reality,as Robert later found, was very different.

TO BE CONTINUED

George Stephenson

George Stephenson

Previously, in Man as Machine, Tarquin O’Flaherty postulated “. . . business was beginning to sniff around for alternatives to the exploitative monopolies of river and canal commercial transport.  This interest would turn the world upside down.”  Here he continues his engrossing account of Robert Stephenson’s influence in the world of steam power, and trains.

With the exception of the Duke of Wellington, an Irishman, who had defeated Napoleon’s Grand Armee at Waterloo, in Belgium, (1815) the most popular man in England, at this time  was undoubtedly the scientist, Sir Humphrey Davy.  He had the happy knack of discovering or inventing things that were immediately useful.  He made all sorts of discoveries regarding agricultural fertilisers, and in his lifetime had discovered chlorine which was immediately used as a superior bleaching agent in the textile industry.  He also came up with potassium, magnesium and sodium amongst others, all of which were also put to immediate use.  This made him a remarkably popular scientist.  He became quite wealthy, and received heaps of honours including, in 1820, becoming President of the Royal Society.  He was an important man.

With the expansion of the coal industry, working below ground was becoming increasingly dangerous.  Coal harbours highly volatile gases and carrying naked flames into the Stygian depths was fraught with peril.  The mine where Stephenson worked, Killingworth, had killed ten men in 1806, and twelve more in 1809.  This horror was being repeated wherever there were coal mines, culminating in the 1812 explosion at a Gateshead colliery which killed 90 men and boys.  Something needed to be done.  Sir Humphrey Davy was called in, pondered the problem, and came up with the Davy Safety Lamp.  The nation was grateful and the lamp was adopted everywhere, except in the North East.

In the North East George Stephenson had already invented a safety lamp which could be taken below ground without fear of endangering lives.  It was ‘Geordie’s lamp’ or George Stephenson’s lamp and was championed in the NE coalmines ahead of Sir Humphrey’s version.

Well, there was hell to pay, and Sir Humphrey took frightful umbrage.  There was much pompous huffing and puffing but, in the end, it was shown that Stephenson had been experimenting with his safety lamp long before Davy arrived in the North East.  Davy, accepting none of this, to his dying day insisted that an uncouth person of Stephenson’s calibre couldn’t possibly have come up with something as sophisticated as the lamp.  Influential people disagreed heartily with Davy and more or less told him to pull his head in. And that was that.

Incidentally, people from the North East of England are, to this day, still referred to as “Geordies’, in memory of those supporters and defiant users of ‘Geordie’s’ lamp rather than the Davy version.

Stephenson’s teenage son Robert, still apprenticed to George’s old friend Nicholas Wood, the manager of Killingworth colliery, was withdrawn from there to help his father survey the ground for the Stockton-Darlington railway.  Already he showed the same natural aptitude for engineering as his father, with the singular advantage of a first class engineering education.  In 1822, still only nineteen, Robert was invited to join William James, a nationally well regarded and enthusiastic promoter of railways, to help with the first survey of a proposed line between Liverpool and Manchester.

Whilst this survey is being undertaken, Stephenson senior was appointed as engineer in charge of the building of the Stockton-Darlington railway.  At roughly the same time he had fallen out with his friend William Losh.  It will be remembered that Stephenson and Losh had entered into a partnership to manufacture patented cast-iron rails which were much in demand for use in the collieries.  However, in 1821 Stephenson had heard of, and gone to see an engineer called John Birkinshaw, in the town of Bedlington.  Birkinshaw had perfected a method of producing wrought (or malleable) iron rails which were infinitely more flexible and much less prone to failure than the cast iron type. Stephenson, recognizing their superiority, was immediately won over, and insisted on using them on the Stockton and Darlington project.  This is a typical instance of Stephenson’s absolute commitment to continued improvement in all aspects of railed transport.  He was earning good money from his patented cast-iron rails, yet he was immediately prepared to forego this in order to make way for this new advance.  Stephenson could see the future, and he knew it was trains.  William Losh was not impressed.