Engine Punk

If you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would said 1894, for most authorities cite the Paris – Rouen event as being the first motor race and with internal combustion engine engines it probably was the first. But what if the motors were steam powered? The suggestion that two road steam motors had raced each other in Manchester in 1867 came from Karl Petersen. Karl is a steam car builder in the USA . He e-mailed me to say "Hi" and to introduce himself after my website and blog had turned up on various searches that he'd conducted. He went on to say that during a visit to the Science Museum library in 1971, he'd found an old book on steam road vehicles built before 1890 - William Fletcher's The History and Development of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads. This had belonged to a relative of the legendary locomotive builder and operator Isaac Watt Boulton and contained annotated notes on various matters that subsequently proved quite accurate. Upon revisiting h...

I first came across Edgar Allen Poe when I read a legendary treatise on steam locomotive history. The Chronicles of Boulton's Siding by Arthur Rosling Bennett - er - chronicles the fascinating and mysterious locomotives that Isaac Boulton bought, rebuilt, sold, sometimes bought back, rebuilt again and often finally sold as winding engines to collieries. Many of them had illustrious careers before they appeared at Boulton's siding in Ashton-under-Lyme but once Boulton had converted them for industrial use only someone with an infectious enthusiasm and deep knowledge of his subject could hope to piece their stories together. Rosling Bennett was that man. Many stories remain incomplete despite Bennett's best efforts but this book is the start of many enquiries into ancient locomotive lore. Despite the murky origins of some of these locomotives I especially liked the line drawings that illustrated them in the condition when Boulton owned them. Boulton even bu...