The word ‘transport’ (or ‘transportation’) means to carry people or goods from place to place. Henry Ford, the American motor-car manufacturer, said that “transportation is civilization”. The history of transport is divided into two stages. The first stage is that in which all modes of transport depended directly on the power of men or animals, or on natural forces such as wind and current. The second stage began with the development of the steam engine. Do you know who invented it? It is sometimes said that James Watt got the idea for a steam engine while still a boy, watching steam lift the lid of his mother's tea kettle. The truth is that James Watt did not invent the steam engine; however, he made major improvements on the inefficient steam enginepatented in 1705 by Thomas Newcomen, John Cawley, and Thomas Savery. James Watt installed his engine in a machine which was used at a large coal mine for pumping out the water. Soon this invention was widely used at nearly every large enterprise. The revolution in industry made by this machine was extremely great.

One of the first attempts to put a steam engine on wheels was made by Richard Trevithick, a British mining engineer. In 1804 he demonstrated the first successful railroad steam locomotive. His engine pulled a short train of cars uphill on a coal-mine railway in Wales. In the years after Trevithick’s locomotive, several others were built for use on various British coal-mine railways. The world’s first common carrier railroadto use steam power was the Stockton-Darlington railway in England. It was designed and built byGeorge Stephenson and opened for public servicein 1825. On the day when it was opened, a man on a horse went in front of the engine and shouted that the train was coming. People on horses and in carriages were driving near the train. When they had gone for some time, Stephenson, who was running his locomotive, asked the horseman to go away. He put steam on and ran his locomotive at a speed of 12 miles per hour (about 20 km per hour). It was a success. But the British Parliament did not want to construct railways. The members of the parliament did not believe that steam engines could run against a strong wind. Then Stephenson built a new locomotive and called it the Rocket. This locomotive was faster and stronger than the first one; it could draw a 13-ton train at an “unheard-of speed” of 29 miles per hour (46 km per hour). In 1829 the Liverpool-Manchester Railway was built, and the railway company offered a prize of £500 for the best steam loco. The prize was won by GeorgeStephenson with his famous train. Though not the first such locomotive, it was the beginning of the effective use of steam power for passenger andfreight transportation. At first many people wereafraid of the railways; nevertheless in 1842 the steam-powered railways were already in wide use in Britain.

Railroads were born in England, a country ofdense population, short distances, and large financial resources. In England problems were very different from those in America, which in the early 1800s was a country of great distances, sparse population, and limited capital. Americans had to learn to build railroads for their own country byactual experience; they could not copy English methods. In the USA the first railroads were built in mines for carrying stone or coal. In 1804 Oliver Evans (who had built an amphibious steam-powered scow with wheels) declared that he could “make a steam carriage that will run at a speedof 15 miles per hour on good, level railways.” As early as 1812 Colonel John Stevens, of Hoboken, N.J., began to speak for a new kind of railway. He wanted one that would provide long-distance transportation, linking distant areas of the country. In 1815 Stevens obtained the first charter to build a railroad across New Jersey, buthe was unable to raise the money needed to build it. The first common carrier railroad tobe built in the United States was the Baltimore and Ohio. It was chartered in1827 and construction started on July 4, 1828.

The first steam locomotive to run in the United States, the English-built Stourbridge Lion, made a trial trip over the tracks of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company in Pennsylvania in 1829. On the day of a test trip a lot of people came from miles around the small Pennsylvania town to see the first run of the steam locomotive. The engineer refused to let anyone ride with him – perhaps because the engine had not been tested before. As the signal to startwas given, there was a moment of suspense. Then, slowly, the wheels began to turn. Cheers went up as engineer Allen opened the throttle wide and began his historic trip. All along the route, men were waving their hats, small boys were shouting, and women were looking in amazement as theLionthundered past at the fantastic speed of ten miles per hour. Who would have believed that anything so big could move so fast without a horse to pull it! But the engine was too heavy for the track and the trip was not repeated. In the summer of 1830 service began on the Baltimore and Ohio line, with horses providing the power. Finally, in December 1830 an American-built locomotive, the Best Friend of Charleston, hauled a train of cars on the tracks of the South Carolina Railroad. The railroad had come to America. Railroads spread rapidly in the eastern and southern United States, with short lines being mergedto form through routes. By the mid-1850s, railways linked the Atlantic seaboard and the Midwest. In 1869 the first transcontinental route was completed to the Pacific coast.Railroads became the dominant mode of overland transportation in the last half of the 19^thcentury. Faster and more powerful locomotives and larger freight and passenger cars were built. Standardization of track gauges and the adoption of standard time zones aided efficiency. The invention of air brakes,automatic signaling, and the automatic couplerincreased safety. Sleeping cars and dining cars increased passenger comfort and convenience.

Notes:

Commoncarrierrailroad – железнаядорогаобщегопользования

engineer – зд: машинист

throttle – дроссель, дроссельнаязаслонка

air brake – воздушныйтормоз

automatic coupler – автосцепка

Answer the following questions.

1) What does the word ‘transport’ mean? 2) Who said that “transportation is civilization”? 3) How many stages is the history of transport divided into? 4) Did the second stage in the history of transport begin with the invention of the wheel? 5)Whom was the first steamengine invented by? 6) Did Thomas Savery improve the inefficient steam engine designed by Thomas Newcomen? 7) Where did James Watt install his engine? 8) Who made one of the first attempts to put a steam engine on wheels? 9) Where was the world’s first common carrier railroad to use steam power built? 10) Did Robert Stephenson design and built the first common carrier railway in Britain? 11) Why didn’t the British Parliament want to build railways? 12) When was the Liverpool-Manchester Railway put into operation? 13) What can you say about the locomotive called the Rocket?

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Практическая работа № 34.

Тема: Локомотив.

Цель: совершенствование навыков использования специальных профессиональных терминов.

Перечень оборудования для проведения работы:тетрадь, письменные принадлежности, словарь.

Задание: прочитайте и переведите текст, ответьте на вопросы.

A locomotive(from Latinloc– 'from a place', ablative of 'locus' = 'place' and Medieval Latin motivus = 'causing motion') is a railwayvehicle that provides the motive power for a train, and has no payload capacity of its own; its sole purpose is to move the train along the tracks. In contrast, many trains feature self-propelled payload-carrying vehicles; these are not normally considered locomotives, and may be referred to as multiple units or railcars; the use of these self-propelled vehicles is increasingly common for passenger trains, but very rare for freight. Vehicles which provide the motive power to haul an unpowered train, but are not generally considered locomotives because they have payload space or are rarely detached from their trains, are known as power cars.

Traditionally, locomotives haul (pull) their trains. Increasingly common these days in local passenger service is push-pull operation, where a locomotive pulls the train in one direction and pushes it in the other, and is therefore optionally controlled from a control cab at the opposite end of the train. This is especially true of "High Speed Rail lines", such as Germany's ICE and France’s TGV trains.

Origins

    The first successful locomotives were built by Cornish inventor Richard Trevithick. In 1804 his unnamed locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near MerthyrTydfil in Wales. Although the locomotive hauled a train of 10 tons of iron and 70 passengers in five wagons over nine miles it was too heavy for the cast iron rails used at the time. The locomotive only ran three journeys before it was abandoned.

In 1813, George Stephenson persuaded the manager of the Killingworthcolliery where he worked to allow him to build a steam-powered machine. He built the Blucher, the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive. The flanges enabled the trains to run on top of the rails instead of in sunken tracks. This greatly simplified construction of switches (called "points" in UK) and rails, and opened the way to the modern railroad.