ON FRIDAY, August 25, Ironbridge’s Blists Hill Victorian Town’s replica of Richard Trevithick’s 1802 Coalbrookdale locomotive was transported to the August 27-28 Shrewsbury Steam Rally using a Fowler steam road locomotive.
The Coalbrookdale locomotive is thought to be a collaboration between the Cornish mining engineer and Shropshire ironmaster William Reynolds.
In 1802, 27 years before Stephenson’s Rocket, work began on the construction of what would have been the world’s first railway locomotive at Coalbrookdale iron foundry. Unfortunately a year later William Reynolds died and the project was never completed.
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In 1989, a team of apprentices at GKN Sankey of Telford began construction of the never-completed locomotive. With the additional inclusion of a few safety additions, such as a trailing driver’s platform, it was launched into service at Blists Hill in 1990.
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