Rainhill Trials

September 15, 1825

George Stephenson's locomotive Rocket ran away with the Rainhill Trials, the competition to choose engines for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Rocket averaged nearly thirty miles per hour. Spectators in crinolines fainted. The age of practical railways had arrived, and a new scale of speed was in the world. Within twenty years Britain would be laced with six thousand miles of track, shrinking distance and remaking commerce.