Perseverance: The Basics

Although not as well-travelled as the Perseverance Rover on Mars, Timothy Burstall's entry at the Rainhill Trials of October 1829 certainly lived up to her name: Perseverance. Burstall was no new-comer to steam and certainly persevered in making a workable locomotive, on both road and rail. Perseverance may have been a Rainhill also-ran, but she influenced many locomotives which came after her.
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[@iwema93]

>the trailing boiler helped mitigate fears of boiler explosion >>1/4 scale model explodes, killing someone >>>design is a success

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

well, once you put it like that.....

[@Poliss95]

Poor old Perseverance hardly ever gets a mention in other accounts of the Rainhill Trials.

[@legdig]

Somewhere there's an alternate timeline where the rover ended up at the trials and there's a very confused perseverance on mars.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

The little engine which tried.....and went into space. Houston, we have a train problem.

[@sebastianthomsen2225]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory :D

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

@@sebastianthomsen2225 "This is Ground Control to Little Train, there's something wrong, your fire's out, your boiler's cold, are you steaming little train? are you steaming little train?"

[@sebastianthomsen2225]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory "negative ground control we are not steaming repeat we are not steaming over!"

[@DiegoLiger]

@@sebastianthomsen2225 "mournful, fading steam whislte"

[@kathyhavelka7612]

Another great episode! I’ve become obsessed with your videos, they’re a perfect blend of information, music, and graphics. Will you be doing a video on either Sans Pareil, the other Rainhill Trials Locomotive, or Cycloped, the horse powered... thing that also competed?

[@crazypickles8235]

This was a very detailed examination on the Rainhill Trials and a little known locomotive. I enjoy the grasshopper 0-4-0s of the early days of the B and O railroad.

[@ilike_trainzzero2402]

This is amazing such a fascinating locomotive I like it keep up the good work

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Thank you very much!

[@johnd8892]

Just came across the Perseverance name being used by Daniel Adamson for his horse drawn carriage on the Stockton and Darlington a few years previously. A persevering bunch back then.

[@RockyRailroadProductions_B0SS]

I had the same thought about the Perseverance rover sharing the name of this very odd little engine. Most books and so on don't give much thought to Burstall as much other than the "Guy who dropped his engine before the Rainhill trials". Fascinating to see how both Bustall and Braithwaite/Erricson had previous experience in steam road engines prior to Rainhill! That detail of Perseverance and Sans Pareil colliding is really interesting as well!

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

The major differance between Burstall and Braithwaite & Ercissons adventures in road steam being that the former built road locomotives whilst the latter built horse-drawn steam pumps.

[@eliotreader8220]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory so Burstall had prevous experince of building traction engines before he turned his hands to building a working steam locomotive with a early Coffee pott boiler?

[@kommandantgalileo]

her design and designer definitely persevered.

[@charliescott7764]

I live just off Queensferry Road in Edinburgh and would be interested to find out more about the trial there. Incidentally Wikipedia refers to the trial as being on Ferry Rd in Glasgow - I doubt such a road existed. Lovely videos and I see you contribute to Back Track which I also subscribe to.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Thankyou. Well, Wikipedia is not known for its accuracy. ... I do contribute indeed: trying to spread the good news of early railways. :-)

[@vsvnrg3263]

excellent, as usual, as expected.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Thank you. I aim to please :-)

[@FQP-7024]

As a namesake it indeed persevered even if it's creator did not manage to get what he wanted. Such a grand story

[@johnclayden1670]

Some much new stuff with every video. Example: the collision between Perseverance and Hackworth's loco? I need to do more reading. Again, many thanks.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

It why I alway rely on primary sources. Always go back to the original source.

[@GNRA1GreatNorthern1470]

FINALLY A VIDEO ON THIS!!!!

[@nicholaskelly6375]

Dad always thought that 'PERSEVERANCE' had been assembled out of parts of his earlier steam carriages.

[@17473039]

Fantastic video as always!

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@ajaxengineco]

8:15 How, why, and how did Sans Pareil end up at such a compromised angle?

[@kathyhavelka7612]

Either they gave the driver some beer before letting him drive, they put beer inside Sans Pareil’s boiler, or both

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Brake failure: it ran away with the net result as in the photo.

[@CaseyJonesNumber1]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory I thought they were demonstrating the hazards of early railway travel! 😉 I've seen a shot of Planet well off the rails too (on your video, I think).

[@eliotreader8220]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory I have never head about Sans Pareil having a accident when the original locomotive was taking Part in the Rainhill trails.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

@@eliotreader8220 Sans Pareil also very nearly ran someone over and killed them. Very near miss!

[@hrunchtayt1587]

Could you possibly talk about early American or even Russian locomotives in the future?

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

The Stephenson locomotives sent to Russia are certainly in the pipe line. But as ever with such a visual medium, it's down to images, something I don't have for Russian locomotives, sadly.

[@Poliss95]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory I have contacts in Moldova. I'll ask if they have any illustrations.

[@DiegoLiger]

@@Poliss95 Thank you so much! That's amazing.

[@eliotreader8220]

until Watched this episode I thought that Perseverance and her builder was over looked by the people who was interested in the events of the Rainhill Trials of October 1829. I had never heard that the railway company gave Timothy Burstall 25 pounds for transporting and steaming his own engine.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

The three Judges and indeed the Company Directors were really fair in giving each of the competitors as much time as possible to get their engines working and make repairs as needed.

[@eliotreader8220]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory because she had a different boiler design is it likely that the original locomotive built by Timothy Burstall had no trouble from clinker that the Novelity had as it sounds like it was possible for it to be removed from her firebox? but we sadly don't know what Perseverance actually looked like.

[@eliotreader8220]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory way did the people who had watched the Rainhil trials have a bad opinion of Perseverance is this partially way we don't know any thing about her physical appearance as it sounds like her builder put a lot of effort in her construction just like Timothy Hackworth did with his own engine.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

@@eliotreader8220 It's due to a) press reportage being horribly biased (largely anti-Stephenson) and b) Perseverence not putting in an appearance until very late in the Trials and then not being a spectacular success. Not great feats of speed from her.

[@eliotreader8220]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory how was the fires lit in the engines during the Rainhill Trials? I understand that back in 1829 they were fired up in a very similar way to how steam locomotive fires was lit today? I understand that Novelity's fire was troublesome.

[@johnjephcote7636]

I guess you could never do a video on the Cycloped (as in Rainhill Trials). I have always been much touched by the English affection for animals (and the sheer daft) for allowing this entirely horse-powered engine into such important trials. It worked quite well until the animal fancied a 'hay break'. (PS 'Burst-all' is not the best name for a steam loco designer).

[@zaku32888]

Will there be videos on steam carriages?

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Maybe.

[@maximike9182]

Hi Anthony, the Science Museum has an engraving of the Moorish Arch from Henry Booth, looking form the east towards the tunnels. Two passenger trains stand on the track towards Liverpool and one lonely small engine with a big flag on the parallel track. As the other Rainhill engines do not seem to match, is that Perseverance?

[@eliotreader8220]

so the space craft was named after the steam locomotive of the same name then?

[@WilliamSmith-zk4tj]

I hope they remembered the rocket

[@barryosullivan5255]

3 out of 5 Rainhill engines down, 2 left to go

[@kathyhavelka7612]

Can you even call Cycloped a engine? It’s a horse on a treadmill

[@barryosullivan5255]

@@kathyhavelka7612 an April Fools episode for that treadmill. Or horse. Is Cyclopede the horse or treadmill?

[@georgflausch]

@@barryosullivan5255 It's the engine. And strange as it may sound, it was a contender at the Rainhill Trials. Or rather, the inventor (a mathematician named Thomas Shaw Brandreth from Liverpool) hoped it would be a contender. The judges shattered his hopes because the rules said clearly that only steam-powered locomotives were admitted to the trials. But they let him demonstrate his horse locomotive which proved to be no faster than 9.6 km/h at most. And that was the end of horse locomotives on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

The rules for the Rainhill Trials simply mention the 'Most Improved Locomotive Engine'. In April 1829 when the Trials were announced there was no stipulation that any locomotive had to be steam-powered. The final list of entrants was boiled down to five machines: four steam-powered and one horse-powered. Then, don't forget the American Ross Winans also built a hand-powered locomotive for the Rainhill Trials, too.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

It was more than just a horse on a treadmill. It was two horses and there was gearing to give two speeds. It's quite a clever design really.

[@WilliamSmith-zk4tj]

60 PSI that was a great accomplishment listen to average steam engine if you could get 10 psi you were a genius

[@johnd8892]

8:15 . So brake failure, but when and where and why was the replica in use?

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

It was on the Bowes Railway in the 1980s. It had been used to pull it's carriage of passengers/tourists. Thankfully this wasn't when working a public passenger train.

[@XanthinZarda]

So a technical question here; was there any debate over boilers regarding orientation, or was that quickly supplanted by bigger questions?

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

The Seguin/Booth and Stephenson multi-tubular boiler rapidly showed its superiority over other forms and won the day. Even marine boilers were horiztonal, just like the boilers for mill engines (good old Cornish Boilers or Lancashire Boilers). There wasn't really a debate in the UK about vertical versus horizontal boilers: there's the odd outlier like Perseverance or The Union, but the horiztonal, mutlit-tubular fire-tube boiler was pretty much the norm. The very rapid sucess of the Stephenson locomotive after Rainhill, and especially of Planet, meant she literally set the mould for what was to come.

[@XanthinZarda]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Ah. So they were Galapagos oddities; evolutionary dead ends that while making fascinating study, have absolutely no purpose.

[@wagnerthomas6780]

This looks exactly like the tom thumb locomotive, which was made in 1829 is it a coincidence? I don't think so.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Perseverence pre-dated Tom Thumb...and we're not sure what Tom Thumb actually looked like.

[@wagnerthomas6780]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory You mean not sure what Perseverence looked like as you mentioned in the video? As there seems to a lot more images about Tom Thumb. Is it impossible that two model were the same, maybe in design or maybe Perseverence were imported to US? There were a lot of pirated designs in that time period.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

@@wagnerthomas6780 we don't know what Tom Thumb looked like. There's a rough sketch made decades after the even and then the wooden "replica" made by Major Pangborn in the 1890s, based on research by the incredibly unreliable Clement Stretton. An operable replica was built, based on the 1890s wooden one in 1927, but again it's pure conjecture. We have a good idea what Perserverance looked like, but not its fine details. I think it would be incredibly unlikely that Perseverence was shipped to the United States.

[@wagnerthomas6780]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Interesting thx!

[@garryferrington811]

Tom Thumb was actually a vertical boiler banged onto a car. Dripps was trying to sell the boiler itself, not build a locomotive. And he did sell it.

[@peterluptak6860]

8:15 What ??? Please explain me.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

Brake failure, sadly.

[@peterluptak6860]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory What abaut that photo of derailed Planet in previous videos.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

@@peterluptak6860 That was when he was raising steam in Manchester in the mid 90s. It was a combination of several errors and also due to copying the original axle designs which were known to be failure prone.....

[@peterluptak6860]

@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Thanks

[@WilliamSmith-zk4tj]

He didn't understand heavy steam and how to achieve it the burner box and the boiler everything has to be well-balanced or Bang I don't think he understood this concept of surface area and what that had to do with the boiler on the rocket and he may have just run out of money with no supporters once the rocket opened up in the line and the phenomenon of people wishing to ride

[@EuroScot2023]

I'm sure it's as good as your other videos, but the subtitles are in Dutch so I cannot tell. Thumbs down, I'm afraid.

[@AnthonyDawsonHistory]

How very odd given that they're set to English.