50 Fun Facts About Steam Trains

Which animal beat Peter Cooper's steam locomotive Tom Thumb in a famous race near Baltimore in 1830?

The horse won only because a belt slipped off Tom Thumb's blower and the fire lost its draught. Until then the tiny engine had pulled easily ahead.

Which film series cast the Great Western locomotive Olton Hall, repainted crimson, as its school train?

Harry Potter's Hogwarts Express was played by a Hall-class engine renamed Hogwarts Castle. Its crimson paint broke with tradition: Great Western engines wore green.

What do steam locomotives drop onto the rails ahead of their wheels to stop them slipping on wet track?

Sand gives steel wheels a grip on steel rails. American engines carried it in a dome on top of the boiler, where the rising heat kept it dry enough to flow.

Which film producer ran a rideable miniature steam railroad around his Los Angeles backyard from 1950?

Walt Disney named his one-eighth-scale engine Lilly Belle after his wife. Guests rode behind it, and the backyard line inspired the railroad at his first theme park.

Which streamlined British locomotive set the steam speed record of 126 mph on a downhill run in 1938?

Mallard was only four months old when it flew down Stoke Bank on what was officially a brake test. The effort overheated a bearing, and it went straight in for repair.

Which Cornish engineer ran the first steam locomotive on rails, at a Welsh ironworks in 1804?

Richard Trevithick's engine hauled ten tons of iron to settle a bet between two ironmasters. It was so heavy that it cracked the tramway's cast-iron plates.

Which fuel did most American steam locomotives burn until about 1870, before coal took over?

Wood threw out so many glowing embers that American engines grew huge funnel-shaped smokestacks, with spark arresters inside to stop them setting the countryside alight.

Which British statesman's 1965 funeral train was hauled by a steam locomotive that carried his own name?

Winston Churchill's coffin left London's Waterloo station behind the engine named after him, bound for Oxfordshire and burial at Bladon beside his ancestors.

Which wedge-shaped frame on the front of American steam locomotives pushed stray animals out of the way?

Cowcatcher credit usually goes to Isaac Dripps, who fitted one to the engine John Bull in 1833. Charles Babbage, the computing pioneer, had proposed the idea in 1830.

Which vehicle, coupled directly behind a steam locomotive, carries its supply of coal and water?

Tender capacity decided how far an engine could run between stops. Locomotives without one, which carry their fuel and water on board, are called tank engines.

Which member of a steam locomotive's crew shovels the coal and keeps the steam pressure up?

Fireman is the railway's word for the job. On steamships and at sawmills the same hot, heavy work of feeding the furnace belonged to a stoker.

Which nickname is carried by the 25 giant 4-8-8-4 steam locomotives built for Union Pacific in the 1940s?

Big Boy was chalked on the first engine's smokebox door by an unknown factory worker, and the name stuck. The class had been expected to be called Wasatch.

Which fictional island is home to Thomas the Tank Engine and the Fat Controller's railway?

Sodor borrows its name from the Diocese of Sodor and Man. Author Wilbert Awdry, a clergyman, noticed there was an Isle of Man but no matching island, so he invented one.

In which present-day US state did the engines Jupiter and No. 119 meet in 1869 to join a transcontinental railroad?

Utah's Promontory Summit hosted the ceremony, where a golden spike joined rails laid from Omaha and Sacramento. In 1942 the bypassed track was torn up for the war effort.

Which locomotive did Union raiders steal in Georgia in 1862, starting the Great Locomotive Chase?

The General was pursued for 87 miles by Confederates, first on foot and then aboard other engines. Buster Keaton turned the story into a silent film comedy in 1926.

Which American engineer died at the controls in 1900, slowing his express before a crash at Vaughan, Mississippi?

Casey Jones ordered his crewmate to jump, then stayed aboard to brake. His passengers survived, and a folk ballad about the wreck made him a legend.

Which luxury train first left Paris in 1883 and later ran through to Constantinople, now Istanbul?

Orient Express services were created by a Belgian sleeping-car company and long outlived the steam age. The name only vanished from European timetables in 2009.

Which bandleader's 1941 hit about a steam train to Chattanooga earned the first gold record?

Glenn Miller's Chattanooga Choo Choo spent nine weeks at number one in America. RCA Victor presented the gold disc in 1942 for sales of about 1.2 million.

Which Victorian novelist survived the 1865 Staplehurst rail crash and tended the injured with his brandy flask?

Charles Dickens also rescued the manuscript of Our Mutual Friend from the wreck. He lost his voice for two weeks and was nervous of train travel ever after.

Which British express locomotive was the first officially recorded at 100 mph, on a 1934 test run?

Flying Scotsman set a second record on tour in Australia: 422 miles without a stop, the longest such run ever made by a steam locomotive.

Which locomotive, built by Robert Stephenson's works, won the 1829 Rainhill Trials near Liverpool?

Rocket was the only entrant to complete the trials, earning a £500 prize. At the railway's opening a year later it struck and killed William Huskisson, a Liverpool MP.

Which country's Darjeeling Himalayan Railway still runs vintage British-built steam engines on two-foot-gauge track?

India's little mountain line climbs more than 2,000 metres using six zigzags and three loops. UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 1999.

Which part, pushed back and forth by steam inside each cylinder, turns a locomotive's wheels through rods?

Piston strokes work in both directions on a locomotive. Steam is let into each end of the cylinder in turn, so every back-and-forth movement gives two pushes.

Which French brothers' 1896 film of a steam train arriving at La Ciotat station became a legend of early cinema?

The Lumière brothers' film lasts just 50 seconds. The story goes that its first viewers screamed and ran to the back of the room as the engine came toward them.

Which engineer built the Great Western Railway to a broad gauge of about seven feet between the rails?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel wanted big wheels set outside the carriage bodies for a smoother ride. His wide track lost out to the narrower standard, and its last trains ran in 1892.

Which 1970 British family film has a steam train flagged down with red petticoats after a landslide?

The Railway Children was shot on Yorkshire's Keighley and Worth Valley line, with Oakworth as the story's station. Its director first read the book on a ship home from America.

Which English painter showed an early steam train crossing Maidenhead Bridge in Rain, Steam and Speed?

J. M. W. Turner painted a hare running along the track ahead of the engine, often read as an emblem of speed. The picture was first exhibited in 1844.

Which type of engine shed, built around a central turntable, gave its name to a London concert venue?

Roundhouse sheds stabled engines on tracks radiating from the turntable. The one at London's Chalk Farm, built in 1846–47, housed locomotives for only about a decade.

Which nickname do 2-8-2 steam locomotives carry, after an old English title for the emperor of Japan?

Mikado stuck after an American builder supplied the type to Japan's Nippon Railway in the 1890s. During the Second World War, US railroads restyled theirs MacArthur Mikados.

Which engine hauled the first train on the Stockton and Darlington Railway when the line opened in 1825?

Locomotion No. 1 was originally named Active. It is believed to be the first engine with coupling rods linking its wheels, which cut down slipping on the iron rails.

Which engine, built around 1813 for a colliery near Newcastle, is the world's oldest surviving steam locomotive?

Puffing Billy hauled coal wagons from the pit to the river docks until 1862. Its owner then lent it to a London museum, and it is still on show in the capital.

Which engine, completed at Swindon in 1960, was the last steam locomotive built by British Railways?

Evening Star was the only member of its heavy freight class to carry a name in British Railways service. The name was chosen through a staff magazine competition.

Which locomotive, finished by a charitable trust in 2008, was Britain's first new main-line steam engine in decades?

Tornado honours the Royal Air Force crews who flew the jet of that name in the Gulf War. In 2017 it became the first steam engine in over 50 years to reach 100 mph in Britain.

Which curving concrete viaduct on the West Highland Line does the Jacobite steam train cross on its way to Mallaig?

Glenfinnan Viaduct was built by Robert McAlpine, a contractor nicknamed Concrete Bob. He chose mass concrete because the local rock was so hard to work.

Which Paris station did a runaway steam locomotive crash out of in 1895, landing nose-down in the street below?

Gare Montparnasse saw the late-running express overrun its buffers, cross the concourse and burst through the wall. Every passenger survived, but falling masonry killed a woman outside.

Which American inventor patented the railway air brake in 1869, years before his rivalry with Edison?

George Westinghouse gave every car its own store of compressed air. That later design made the brake fail-safe: if the train's pipe loses pressure, even because the train has broken in two, the brakes go on by themselves.

Which English city is home to the National Railway Museum, opened in a former locomotive depot in 1975?

York's museum is the largest of its type in Britain. Beside the steam giants of the national collection, it displays a Japanese bullet train.

In which US state do steam trains still run between Durango and Silverton, on a line built to carry silver ore?

Colorado's line through the San Juan Mountains has run without a break since the 1880s. It is one of the few places in America where steam locomotives never went out of use.

Which New Hampshire peak is climbed by the world's first mountain cog railway, still partly worked by steam?

Mount Washington's line was nicknamed the Railway to the Moon, after a state legislator joked that its builder might as well be given a charter to go there too.

Which Pennsylvania city, setting of the sitcom The Office, is home to Steamtown National Historic Site?

Scranton's museum grew from the collection of Nelson Blount, a New England seafood millionaire. His Steamtown ran in Vermont until it moved to Pennsylvania in 1984.

Which Southern city's Best Friend, often called America's first home-built working locomotive, blew up in 1831?

Charleston's engine is said to have burst because a crewman, tired of the hissing safety valve, tied it shut. It was the first such explosion on an American railroad.

Which London and North Eastern Railway engineer designed its streamlined A4 express locomotives of the 1930s?

Nigel Gresley also devised a valve gear that let a three-cylinder engine run on two sets of mechanism instead of three, giving smooth power at lower cost.

Which country's streamlined locomotive 05 002 took the world steam speed record at 200.4 km/h in 1936?

Germany's record was set on level track on the Hamburg to Berlin line. The British engine that beat it two years later had the help of a downhill stretch.

Which 1968 excursion, named after its steep ticket price, was British Rail's last main-line steam passenger train?

Fifteen Guinea Special tickets cost £15 15s, a price pushed up by demand for the final run. Guineas were normally quoted only for luxuries and professional fees.

Which Philadelphia company, founded by a jeweller, was for decades the world's largest builder of steam locomotives?

Baldwin Locomotive Works turned out more than 70,000 engines in all. Its founder's first full-size one, Old Ironsides, was tested in 1832.

Which country was still building its QJ-class steam freight locomotives in 1988, decades after the West went diesel?

China built more than 4,700 of the class, nearly all at its Datong works. One line, the Jitong railway, kept them hauling heavy freight until 2005.

Which coal-hauling railroad, based in Roanoke, Virginia, was the last major American line to rely on steam locomotives?

Norfolk and Western built its own steam locomotives in its Roanoke shops, and kept the last of its giant freight engines at work into the early 1960s.

Which poet wrote the verse commentary for Night Mail, a 1936 documentary about a steam-hauled postal train?

W. H. Auden timed his rhyming lines to the quickening rhythm of the locomotive on screen. The score was written by the young Benjamin Britten.

Which former Beatle was the first narrator of the television series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends?

Ringo Starr got the job because the producer found his voice perfect for narration, not because of his old band. The series reached British television in 1984.

Which Impressionist painted twelve views of steam and smoke at Paris's Gare Saint-Lazare in 1877?

Claude Monet rented a studio near the station and won the railway director's permission to paint beside the tracks. It was his first series on a single theme.