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Description
Wylam Colliery 0-4-0 steam locomotive Puffing Billy -- built by Hedley, Forster and Rastrick in 1814 as the first adhesion steam locomotive in revenue service -- was retired in 1862 and donated to the Patent Office Museum by colliery owner Edward Blackett, who had her shipped from Northumberland down to London. The museum has changed over the past century and a half and is now called the Science Museum, but Puffing Billy still stands there as the world's oldest surviving steam locomotive. Apart from proving that rack railways were unnecessary on slight grades and adhesion railways with steam locomotives could work, she inspired light music composer Edward White to write a fast-paced song -- also called Puffing Billy -- that American network CBS used as the Captain Kangaroo theme. It's strange to think that King George III and Emperor Napoleon were still alive, Britain was fighting both France and America, and Sir Walter Scott's Waverley was a new bestseller rather than a literary classic in the same year this locomotive pulled her first train.

Description
Wylam Colliery 0-4-0 steam locomotive Puffing Billy -- built by Hedley, Forster and Rastrick in 1814 as the first adhesion steam locomotive in revenue service -- was retired in 1862 and donated to the Patent Office Museum by colliery owner Edward Blackett, who had her shipped from Northumberland down to London. The museum has changed over the past century and a half and is now called the Science Museum, but Puffing Billy still stands there as the world's oldest surviving steam locomotive. Apart from proving that rack railways were unnecessary on slight grades and adhesion railways with steam locomotives could work, she inspired light music composer Edward White to write a fast-paced song -- also called Puffing Billy -- that American network CBS used as the Captain Kangaroo theme. It's strange to think that King George III and Emperor Napoleon were still alive, Britain was fighting both France and America, and Sir Walter Scott's Waverley was a new bestseller rather than a literary classic in the same year this locomotive pulled her first train.