Russia’s First Railway
Sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth brought a locomotive over to St Petersburg, and Russia’s railway revolution was ready for the off.
1836
King William IV 1830-1837 to Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth brought a locomotive over to St Petersburg, and Russia’s railway revolution was ready for the off.
1836
King William IV 1830-1837 to Queen Victoria 1837-1901
British engineers and a sixteen-year-old boy played a key part in helping Imperial Russia begin her own railway revolution. In one respect, however, Russia failed to learn from the example the United Kingdom set for her: private enterprise.
IN 1836, sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth arrived in the Russian capital, St Petersburg, bearing the heavy responsibility of delivering a steam locomotive, built by his father Timothy at Shildon in County Durham, to the Russian Empire’s first railway line.*
The locomotive’s destination was a 6ft-gauge, 17-mile demonstration track from St Petersburg to Pavlovsk, via Tsarskoye Selo and the famous Catherine Palace. The line’s purpose was to prove to Tsar Nicholas I, who personally attended the tests and who held the purse-strings, that Russia could build her own railways, and maintain them through a Russian winter.
Several of the line’s engineers brought experience from England, and a locomotive by the Cherepanov brothers was supplemented by the Shildon engine. The affable Tsar confided to young John his amazement at how far technology had come since 1816, when on a visit to England he had seen with his own eyes John Blenkinsopp’s rack-and-pinion locomotives at work on the Middleton Railway near Leeds.*
See our post Timothy Hackworth.
The Middleton Railway remains in operation today as a preserved industrial railway.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Timothy Hackworth send his son to Russia in 1836?
To deliver a locomotive to St Petersburg.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Russia’s first railway opened in 1837. The first train ran on October 30th. The steam locomotive was built in England.