“I have the satisfaction to inform you the Tram Road Engine goes off very well - we have made a Journey on our Tram Road nine and a half miles in length - it took 10 Tons long wts of Iron & about 60 or 70 people riding on the Trams which added 4 or 5 tons more to the wt - it goes very easy 4 miles an hour, & is as tractable as a Horse, will back its load, & move it forward as little (& slow) at a time as you please - with this Engine we can manage the different tryals ......” so wrote Samuel Homfray to Simon Goodrich following the successfull operation of the first steam locomotive in the world to haul a load on rails on 21st February 1804.
The bi-centenary of this historic first journey between Penydarren, Merthyr Tydfil and Abercynon in South Wales was celebrated by a series of events and exhibitions from February to September 2004.
This site will shortly be updated to act as an archive of the events and to detail progress on the construction of “The Trevithick Trail”
A joint public/private/voluntary sector partnership to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the Penydarren Locomotive - the first steam locomotive in the world to haul a load on rails.
Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) ‘father of the locomotive engine’ ...completed first steam carriage to carry passengers, 1801; devised improved locomotive, the first tried on a railway, at Pen y darren, 1804; ....erected the first ‘Cornish Engine’ 1812; .....as an inventor, ‘one of the greatest that ever lived’. (The Concise Dictionary of National Biography)
Site updated 25th June 2007
Number of site
Visitors since
1st September 2002:
Web counter supplied by
www.digits.com/
The “Richard Trevithick” coach.
Photographs of Sixty Sixty coach in Trevithick 2004 livery. Click photo to access
Locomotive drawings from “Life of Trevithick”
by Francis Trevithick, published 1872.
