[1] The world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey took place on 21 February 1804, when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.

Throughout his professional career he went through many ups and downs and at one point faced financial ruin, also suffering from the strong rivalry of many mining and steam engineers of the day.

Boulton & Watt served an injunction on him at Ding Dong, and posted it "on the minestuffs" and "most likely on the door" of the Count (Account) House which, although now a ruin, is the only surviving building from Trevithick's time there.

He also experimented with the plunger-pole pump, a type of pump—with a beam engine—used widely in Cornwall's tin mines, in which he reversed the plunger to change it into a water-power engine.

[10] Independently of this, Arthur Woolf was experimenting with higher pressures whilst working as the Chief Engineer of the Griffin Brewery (proprietors Meux and Reid).

Exhaust steam was vented via a vertical pipe or chimney straight into the atmosphere, thus avoiding a condenser and any possible infringements of Watt's patent.

The vehicle was left under some shelter with the fire still burning whilst the operators retired to a nearby public house for a meal of roast goose and drinks.

[18] To date, the only known information about it comes from a drawing preserved at the Science Museum, London, together with a letter written by Trevithick to his friend Davies Giddy.

[19] On the drawing, the piston-rod, guide-bars and cross-head are located directly above the firebox door, thus making the engine extremely dangerous to fire while moving.

Although Trevithick considered the explosion to be caused by a case of careless operation rather than design error, the incident was exploited relentlessly by James Watt and Matthew Boulton (competitors and promoters of the low-pressure engine) who highlighted the perceived risks of using high-pressure steam.

With the assistance of Rees Jones, an employee of the iron works, and under the supervision of Samuel Homfray, the proprietor, Trevithick mounted the engine on wheels and turned it into a locomotive.

On 21 February 1804, amid great interest from the public, it successfully carried 10 tons of iron, five wagons and 70 men the full distance in 4 hours and 5 minutes, at an average speed of approximately 2.4 mph (3.9 km/h).

At one end, a single cylinder, with very long stroke, was mounted partly in the boiler, and a piston rod crosshead ran out along a slidebar, an arrangement that looked like a giant trombone.

Trevithick's was probably the first to do so;[26] but some of the short cast iron plates of the tramroad broke under the locomotive, because they were intended only to support the lighter axle load of horse-drawn wagons.

[citation needed] Christopher Blackett, proprietor of the Wylam colliery near Newcastle, heard of the success in Wales and wrote to Trevithick asking for locomotive designs.

The configuration differed from the previous locomotives in that the cylinder was mounted vertically and drove a pair of wheels directly without a flywheel or gearing.

Progress stalled, and a few of the directors attempted to discredit Trevithick, but the quality of his work was eventually upheld by two colliery engineers from the North of England.

Trevithick went on to research other projects to exploit his high-pressure steam engines: boring brass for cannon manufacture, stone crushing, rolling mills, forge hammers, blast furnace blowers as well as the traditional mining applications.

In 1811 draining water from the rich silver mines of Cerro de Pasco in Peru at an altitude of 4,330 metres (14,210 ft) posed serious problems for the man in charge, Francisco Uville.

The low-pressure condensing engines by Boulton and Watt developed so little power as to be useless at this altitude, and they could not be dismantled into sufficiently small pieces to be transported there along mule tracks.

On 20 October 1816 Trevithick left Penzance on the whaler ship Asp accompanied by a lawyer named Page and a boilermaker bound for Peru.

The initial party comprised Trevithick, Scottish mining projector James Gerard,[37] two schoolboys: José Maria Montealegre (a future president of Costa Rica) and his brother Mariano, whom Gerard intended to enrol at a small boarding school at Lauderdale House in Highgate (where Trevithick later made his temporary London home),[38] and seven natives, three of whom returned home after guiding them through the first part of their journey.

Still in the company of Gerard, he made his way to Cartagena where he chanced to meet Robert Stephenson who was himself on his way home from Colombia, following a failed three-year mining venture.

Whilst Stephenson and Gerard booked passage via New York, Trevithick took ship direct to Falmouth, arriving there in October 1827 with few possessions other than the clothes he was wearing.

Taking encouragement from earlier inventors who had achieved some successes with similar endeavours, Trevithick petitioned Parliament for a grant, but he was unsuccessful in acquiring one.

In Camborne, outside the public library, a statue by Leonard Stanford Merrifield depicting Trevithick holding one of his small-scale models[40] was unveiled in 1932 by Prince George, Duke of Kent, in front of a crowd of thousands of local people.

[45] The window depicts St Michael at the top and nine Cornish saints, Piran, Petroc, Pinnock,[46] Germanus, Julian, Cyriacus, Constantine, Nonna and Geraint in tiers below.

It says "In commemoration of the achievements of Richard Trevithick who having constructed the first steam locomotive did on February 21st 1804 successfully hail 10 tons of iron and numerous passengers along a tramroad from Merthyr to this precinct where was situated the loading point of the Glamorgan Canal".

The team consisting of John Woodward, Mark Rivron and Sean Oliver, have continued to maintain and display the engine at various steam fairs across the country.

Harry Turtledove's alternate history short story "The Iron Elephant" has a character named Richard Trevithick inventing a steam engine in 1782 and subsequently racing a woolly mammoth-drawn train that it would in time come to supplant.