Stephenson's Rocket And The Rainhill Trials

Author: Richard Gibbon, Softbound, 56 Pages, ISBN: 9780747808039, 1st Edition, 2010

- Shire Library Series

George and Robert Stephenson's Rocket is perhaps the most famous locomotive in railway history. But what makes Rocket so special? And why does the surviving locomotive look so unlike the striking yellow image that we are familiar with from books, postage stamps and the five-pound note? Rocket was built to take part in The Rainhill Trials, the competition to design a locomotive to pull trains on the world's first passenger line, the Liverpool and Manchester.

The trials caught the public's imagination and their victor became a symbol of technological progress, setting the pattern for steam locomotive development for the next 130 years. But would locomotives have developed differently if Rocket had not won the trials? Many such questions are answered by Richard Gibbon in this colourfully illustrated biography of the engine that set the standard.

Richard Gibbon OBE spent fifteen years as Head of Engineering Collections at the National Railway Museum, York, during which time he cared for the working replica of Rocket.