Note 33 — Chapter V

Thomas Gray, a native of Leeds, was an enthusiastic believer in the new tractive power, and wherever he went he preached up railways and Blenkinsop's locomotive. While he was living at Brussels in 1816, a canal to Charleroi was under consideration, on which he seized the opportunity of urging the superior merits of a railway. When he returned to England in 1820, he wrote a book upon the subject, entitled, "Observations on a General Iron Railway," in which he strongly advocated the advantages of railways generally, giving as a frontispiece to the book an engraving of Blenkinsop's engine. And several years after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway we find Thomas Gray, true to his first love, urging in the "Mechanics' Magazine" the superiority of Blenkinsop's cogged wheel and rail over the smooth road and rail of the modern railway.