Rocket (Locomotive)

Rocket was an early steam locomotive designed and built by Robert Stephenson in 1829 at the Forth Street Works of his company in Newcastle upon Tyne. It won the Rainhill Trials held that October by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, beating the required average speed of 10 miles per hour over 70 miles by more than 40 percent and hauling loaded carriages at over 15 miles per hour, while no other locomotive at the trials could match its performance reliably. Rocket combined several existing innovations, including a multi-tube boiler, angled cylinders and a blastpipe arrangement, into a single locomotive that became the template most later steam locomotives followed for the next 150 years.