Steam Horse locomotive

The Steam Horse was an early railway steam locomotive constructed by the Butterley Company in Derbyshire in 1813 to the design of William Brunton, and it was also known as the Mechanical Traveller. Instead of relying on the adhesion of smooth wheels on rails, it had a pair of mechanical legs whose feet gripped the ground behind the engine and pushed it forward along the rails at about three miles an hour. Brunton took out a patent for it dated 22 May 1813, and the first locomotive cost 240 pounds. The company faced a steep gradient of 1 in 50 between its limestone quarry at Crich and the Cromford Canal, and horse fodder had become expensive during the Napoleonic Wars. A larger version with a nine foot boiler was apparently built for Newbottle Colliery in County Durham, where on 31 July 1815 its wrought iron boiler exploded during a demonstration, killing thirteen spectators, in what is regarded as the first recorded railway disaster.