Replica Rocket
Almost everyone has heard of Stephenson's Rocket. George Stephenson and his son Robert, were amongst the very first locomotive engineers. They believed passionately about steam and used a pioneering boiler design to build this famous locomotive.
Rocket established the basic architecture for the steam locomotive. The main features were: a multi-tubular boiler, to improve the heat transfer from the firebox gases into the boiler water; the 'blast pipe' which used the steam exhaust to improve the air draught through the firebox; and direct coupling, by connecting rods, from the pistons to the driving wheels.
Stephenson's Rocket was an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. It was built for, and won, the Rainhill Trials held by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1829 to choose the best design to power the railway.
Rocket was designed by Robert Stephenson in 1829, and built at the Forth Street Works of his company in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Though the Rocket was not the first steam locomotive, it was the first to bring together several innovations to produce the most advanced locomotive of its day. It is the most famous example of an evolving design of locomotives by Stephenson that became the template for most steam engines in the following 150 years.
The locomotive was preserved and is now on display in the Science Museum in London.
In 1923, Buster Keaton had a functioning replica built for the film, Our Hospitality. Two years later, the replica was used again in the Al St. John film, The Iron Mule, directed by Keaton's mentor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The subsequent whereabouts of the replica are unknown. There are, however, at least two other replicas of Rocket in the USA, both built by Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns in 1929; one is at the Henry Ford Museum in the Metro Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, the other at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.
The earliest full-size replica of Rocket seems to have been one depicted on a London & North Western Railway postcard (therefore pre-1923).
A cut-away static replica was built in 1935 and displayed for many years next to the original at London's Science Museum, and in 1979 a further, working replica Rocket was built by Locomotion Enterprises in the Springwell workshops at the Bowes Railway for the 150th anniversary celebrations. It has a shorter chimney than the original to clear the bridge at Rainhill: the trackbed is deeper than in the 19th century, giving less headroom. Both of these replicas are now based at the National Railway Museum, York.