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Eyewitness Descriptions and Letters


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Letter from Richard Trevithick to Davies Giddy (1808)
 "THAMES ARCHWAY, ROTHERHITHE
"July 28, 1808.

"MR. GIDDY,
"Sir, - I have yours of the 24th, and intend to put the inscription on the engine which you sent to me.
"About four or five days ago I tried the engine, which worked exceedingly well; but the ground was very soft, and the engine (about 8 tons) sank the timber under the rails, and broke a great number of them. I have now taken up the whole of the timber and iron, and have laid balk of from 12 to 14 inches square down on the ground, and have nearly all the road laid again, which now appears very firm. We proved every part as we lay it down, by running the engine over it by hand. I hope it will all be complete by the end of this week. The tunnel is at a stand.
"Yours very humble servant,
"RICHARD TREVITHICK."

Memorandum of Mrs. Mary Phillipa Guillemard, sister of Davies Giddy (1808)
 My ride with Trevithick, in the year 1808, in an open carriage, propelled by the steam-engine, of which the enclosed is a print, took place on a waste piece, now Torrington Square.

John Isaac Hawkin's Letter to the "Mechanics Magazine" (27th March 1847)
 Mr. Trevithick's New Road Expriments in 1808.
"SIR,
"Observing that it is stated in your last number (No. 1232, dated the 20th instant, page 269), under the head of 'Twenty-one Years' Retrospect of the Railway System,' that the the greatest speed of Trevithick's engine was five miles an hour, I think it due to the memory of that extraordinary man to declare that about the year 1808 he laid down a circular railway in a field adjoining the New Road, near or at the spot now forming the southern half of Euston Square; that he placed a locomotive engine, weighing about 10 tons, on that railway - on which I rode, with my watch in hand - at the rate of twelve miles an hour; that Mr. Trevithick then gave his opinion that it would go twenty miles an hour, or more, on a straight railway; that the engine was exhibited at one shilling admittance, including a ride for the few who were not so timid; that it ran for some weeks, when a rail broke and occasioned the engine to fly off in a tangent and overrun, the ground being very soft at the time.
"Mr. Trevithick having expended all his means in erecting the works and enclosure, and the shillings not having come in fast enough to pay current expenses, the engine was not again set on the rail.
"I am Sir, your obedient servant,
"JOHN ISAAC HAWKINS,
"Civil Engineer, London."

Letter from Mr. Albinus Martin perhaps to Francis Trevithick (1868)
 "I am sorry to be unable to give you any useful information about the engine exhibited in London more than half a century ago. I cannot even fix the time but from comparison with other dates, it could not have been in 1803. William Rastrick was resident engineer on the works of the driftway under the Thames, and he was very kind to me as a boy. I think it must have been to him that I was indebted for a sight of the engine exhibited, for I know got in without any payment, and felt myself thereby recognized as belonging to the craft. The place was at the rear of what were then florists' or nursery gardens, in the New Road, very near if not on the site of the North-Western Railway Station.
"There was was a circular railways of about - I can't tell the gauge or the diameter - but perhaps a hundred feet. The engine itself was to me an entire novelty, but not differing in general appearence from that on the Merthyr tramroad, and of which an engraving has been published.
"The space in which this circular railroad was enclosed was surrounded by a fence, made of close-fitting 12 or 15 feet deals. When I saw it the engine was out of steam, and there were no spectators. Trevithick was not there, nor can I recollect who was.
"From my recollection of events it was about 1806."