All About Engines

254 All About Engines man at a colliery, he started while he was still a child to look after cows on a neighbouring farm. Even then most of his spare time was occupied in constructing models with the aid of a pocket-knife ; and when he started to work at the pit the engine was a perpetual source of interest to him. He felt keenly his need of education, and attended a night school when opportunity occurred. In such circum- stances the man whose name was to become known throughout the world as the founder of the world’s railways learnt, at nineteen years of age, to write his own name. Always working, spending his evenings and week ends in studying or in adding to his scanty income by mending boots and repairing watches, he secured steady promotion until, in 1812, he was appointed engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery at £100 a year. In this position he had great opportunities for improving the machinery in his care, and he used them to the utmost. During the previous forty years the practice had arisen of laying first wooden and then iron plates upon the ground to carry the wheels of trucks of coal drawn by horses, and at Killing- worth Colliery there was a track of this kind, several miles in length, leading to the quay side. He had already constructed a self-acting incline in the pit by which the loaded wagons running downhill drew the empty wagons uphill, and in this way reduced the number of horses required from 100 to 16 ; and he became possessed of the idea that a steam engine would be more effective than horse haulage on the