Inland Transport

From Chapter 5: Turnpike Trusts

Three of the road builders employed by the Turnpike companies have become particularly famous. "Blind Jack" Metcalf of Knaresborough in Yorkshire was perhaps the most remarkable because although he had been blind from the age of six, he made a living as a carter traveling on poor roads all over the north of England. In 1765 he applied for a contract to repair part of a turnpike road from Boroughbridge to Harrogate, near his home, and he made such a good job of it that he was in demand as a road builder for the rest of his life. Using a hollow stick to tap the ground and judge the state of the road-bed Metcalf built many kilometres of road in the difficult Pennine country on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border.
(This chapter includes a diagram showing the difference between the Telford and Macadam method of road construction)

From Chapter 7: The Canals

The early canals built by Brindley and his assistants followed the contour lines making graceful sweeps and curves through the countryside in order to keep to one level and avoid the need for costly engineering works. The later canals, however, built when engineers were gaining confidence and when traveling times needed to be reduced, take much more direct routes, and are provided with imposing embankments and tunnels, lock flights and aqueducts. Telford's splendid Pontcysyllte Aqueduct across the Vale of Llangollen in North Wales is approximately one kilometre in length and carries his canal at a height of more than thirty metres across the River Dee. (Photograph included of the Pontcysllte Aqueduct)

From Chapter 8: Railways

In 1813 one of these engineers, William Hedley, built a locomotive called "Puffling Billy" which you can see at work in the photograph. A year later another mining engineer in the same district named George Stevenson built his first locomotive which he called "Blucher" after the famous Prussian general who at that time was fighting Napoleon.