Great Western Coffee Shop

Nice for an armchair traveller like myself to be able to enjoy a new series of Michael Portillo's Railway Journeys.  However I think it's a shame that along with the social history of the areas he's visiting there isn't more programme content on the history of the railways themselves.  Fancy having to watch 'Flog It!' to get an item about a steam line!  I refer to an episode recently when the presenter got to ride on the Pickering Heritage Railway.  Lucky man!

Michael Portillo was blowing George Stephenson's trumpet on his railway programme this evening, when surely we all know it was Cornishman Richard Trevithick who invented the first steam engine to run on rails, in 1804?   ???

But do you credit the researcher or the developer?  ;)

Trevithick - "This venture also suffered from weak tracks and public interest was limited."
Stephenson - "managed to solve the problem caused by the weight of the engine on the primitive rails."

Good point Grahame, and I can see why Stephenson gets all the credit for the first 'operational' steam engine, which didn't keep buckling and breaking the rails on which it ran.  It just annoys me that for all the effort Trevithick put into the development of steam engines (and not just the ones running on rails) that it's always Stephenson who gets all the credit.  I must admit I hadn't even heard of Trevithick myself until an adult interested in our steam/railway heritage. He certainly didn't feature in any school history lessons!

Good point Grahame, and I can see why Stephenson gets all the credit for the first 'operational' steam engine, which didn't keep buckling and breaking the rails on which it ran.  It just annoys me that for all the effort Trevithick put into the development of steam engines (and not just the ones running on rails) that it's always Stephenson who gets all the credit.  I must admit I hadn't even heard of Trevithick myself until an adult interested in our steam/railway heritage. He certainly didn't feature in any school history lessons!
[/quote]

Just as it annoys me that British Rail Research did all the development on tilting trains, but they could not solve the problem of passengers feeling nauseous.  So government axed it.  Then 20 years later the French/Italians sell us the same technology with a small tweak and call it Pendelino.

I don't think the government cancelled the APT because passengers were feeling nauseous. Funding for the project was always patchy. The three prototype APT-P sets were put into passenger service prematurely - a decision by BR management, over-ruling the engineers. Testing was incomplete and faults were still to be ironed out. Deciding to do the public introduction in the winter (Dec 1981) probably wasn't the wisest idea either.

Management and political faith in the project was evaporating, and despite a quiet re-introduction of the prototypes into passenger service in 1984, after further testing and with faults overcome, there was no management will or government money to continue with building the production ATP-S fleet.

It's often been reported subsequently that most of the 'passengers' who had reported feeling nauseous were folk from the fourth estate who had over-indulged the BR liquid hospitality on the inaugural press runs.