Showcasing British locomotives
London and North-Western Railway 8-wheeled compound express passenger engine.
Great Western Railway broad-gauge express locomotive.The double page frontispieces shown here introduce a work that looks back upon a century of development of the steam engine in Britain.
The technical specifications of a ‘London and North-Western Railway 8-wheeled compound express engine’ and a ‘Great Western Railway broad gauge express locomotive’ are shown with their respective photographs, as exhibited at the Chicago exhibition of 1893.
The comparisons of British locomotives continue throughout, for the delectation of the general reader, or perhaps the early train-spotter, at whom the work is aimed. Indeed, the author records in the preface that the work is written for ‘the many people in the world who take an intelligent interest in the railway working and locomotives’ and the numerous illustrations in the work reflect this.
Whittaker’s, the publishers of the work, also published a range of similar titles under the auspices of their ‘Library of popular science’ imprint and other works listed in their publisher’s catalogue at the back of this book include Electricity and magnetism, Pictorial astronomy and Geology.
In this exhibition
- Early telegraphy
- Submarine telegraphy
- Railways and the Victorian age
- Planning the network
- Developing the engines
- Showcasing British locomotives
- Imperial connections
- Maritime innovation and control of the seas
- The pre-history of the Channel Tunnel
- Imperial designs of architecture
- A 'national disgrace': sanitation, sewage and agriculture
- Scientific and technological enquiry
- Select bibliography