What was the speed of the first train to ever be built?

Question

What was the speed of the first train to ever be built?

Answer 1

I assume you mean the first locomotive - the train is what a locomotive hauls. The first locomotive was not Stephenson's Rocket, but one built 20 years earlier by Richard Trevithick and which had a speed of about 4mph.

Answer 2

Trevithick and Hedley of Puffing Billy / Wylam Dilly fame built for haulage rather than speed and accepted a speed of around 4mph,similar to a heavy Horse, Trevithics engines tended to drive through a rack system whilst Hedleys were pure adhesion.

By Rainhill 1929 the Rocket, a dedicated "Racing" engine by Stephenson with the multitube Booth boiler could hit 30 and Stephenson engines as modified by Gooch were running at 60 by 1842 and into the 70s along the Thames Valley by 1848 The Great Western Railway was the Fastest ride in the world at that time.

Answer 3

30mph - Stevenson's Rocket.

Answer 4

60km/h

Answer 5

r-denig is right. Only about walking speed was it for the first locomotive. But you have to remember, the speed wasn't important at the time. Just as with the first rocket, or the first jet engine, or the first automobile. No one really was concerned with how fast or how far, first order of business was to just get these things to work and function. I heard not very long ago that the normal running speed in 1869 for a train on the transcontinental railroad was 30 mph. Very few people then had gone that fast before. Some of that railroad was capable of higher speeds. But generally, the line was so hastily built, higher speeds were not safe. Again, the object was to just get the thing to work and function.