Spotlight: Vauxhall

Many early locomotive designs were at the cutting edge of technology, if not beyond it, especially in terms of metallurgy. One such locomotive was Robert Stephenson's Planet which suffered from a series of broken axles due to fragile crank axles being forged by hand. George Forrester of Liverpool designed a locomotive inspired by the Planet design but with straight axles, making for a much safer machine, but in the process encountering new problems. This is the story of his first locomotive, Vauxhall.