A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the … See more

Boiler
The fire-tube boiler was standard practice for steam locomotive. Although other types of See more

Numerous variations on the basic locomotive occurred as railways attempted to improve efficiency and performance.
Cylinders
Early steam … See more

Measurement
In the steam locomotive era, two measures of locomotive performance were generally applied. At first, locomotives were rated by tractive effort, defined as the average force developed during one revolution of the … See more

Britain
The earliest railways employed horses to draw carts along rail tracks. In 1784, William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a small-scale prototype of a steam road locomotive in Birmingham. A full-scale rail steam locomotive … See more

All locomotives are fitted with a variety of appliances. Some of these relate directly to the operation of the steam engine; others are for … See more

Steam locomotives are categorised by their wheel arrangement. The two dominant systems for this are the Whyte notation See more