| Saturday
28 April 2001 - Trevithick Day in Camborne ... |
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| Today was
Trevithick Day in Camborne, where celebrations are held annually on
the last Saturday in April in honour of Camborne's most famous son, the
inventor Richard Trevithick. This was the crowd in Trelowarren
Street this afternoon. |
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| Commercial
Square |
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| The
parade of steam traction engines, steam rollers and steam trucks in
Trelowarren Street |
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| Bagpipes
and drums entertaining the crowd in Commercial Square. |
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| The
parade of steam engines continuing along Trevenson Street. |
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| This parade
was billed as the largest urban steam event in the world. |
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| Richard Trevithick was born in Illogan in 1771. By 1796 he had developed models of high-pressure, non-condensing steam engines, which were an improvement on the low-pressure engines built by the Scottish inventor James Watt. The first steam-propelled vehicle ever to carry passengers, built by Trevithick, ran on Christmas Eve 1801. It unfortunately ran out of steam half way up
Tehidy Road and rolled back down to the bottom of the hill. This event is recalled in the Cornish song,
"Going Up Camborne Hill, Coming
Down".
This year, being the 200th anniversary of that famous journey, the
Trevithick Day celebrations have been especially well publicised and
supported.
1804 saw the first instance of a steam powered locomotive hauling loads on a railway when a Trevithick steam locomotive with four driving wheels carried 10 tons of iron about 9 miles from Merthyr Tydfil to Abercynon in Wales. Trevithick successfully constructed further steam locomotives running on rails and he is considered by many to be the inventor of the steam locomotive. He also invented a steam-powered lift, dredger and threshing machine
He spent 11 years working in Peruvian silver mines before returning to Cornwall.
Richard Trevithick is buried in an unmarked grave at Dartford, Kent,
where he was working when he died in 1833. |
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| Here is
the recently constructed working replica of Trevithick's steam road
locomotive in Trevenson Street. |
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| The
locomotive was attracting a lot of attention and it took some
persevering to get these photographs. |
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| Just
after I had taken this photo, the driver opened the regulator and I
was showered with a mixture of sooty water, steam and coal dust!
The Trevithick Day
website:
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