Puffing Billy (locomotive)
Puffing Billy is an early railway steam locomotive, constructed in 1813-1814 by engineer William Hedley, enginewright Jonathan Forster and blacksmith Timothy Hackworth for Christopher Blackett, the owner of Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne, in the United Kingdom. It is the world's oldest surviving steam locomotive. It was the first commercial adhesion steam locomotive, employed to haul coal chaldron wagons from the mine at Wylam to the docks at Lemington-on-Tyne in Northumberland.
Read more about Puffing Billy (locomotive): History, Design, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words puffing and/or billy:
“Again we mistook a little rocky islet seen through the “drisk,” with some taller bare trunks or stumps on it, for the steamer with its smoke-pipes, but as it had not changed its position after half an hour, we were undeceived. So much do the works of man resemble the works of nature. A moose might mistake a steamer for a floating isle, and not be scared till he heard its puffing or its whistle.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““Although I’d lie lapped up in linen
A deal I’d sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,”
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)