Rail transport Kingdom in 1804 by Richard Trevithick, a British engineer born in Cornwall. This used high-pressure steam to drive the engine by one power stroke. The transmission system employed a large flywheel to even out the action of the piston rod. On 21 February 1804, the world's first steam-powered railway journey took place when Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. Trevithick later demonstrated a locomotive operating upon a piece of circular rail track in Bloomsbury, London, the "Catch Me Who Can", but never got beyond the experimental
Catch Me Who Can circular track in Bloomsbury, just south of the present-day Euston Square tube station, in London. Members of the public could pay to ride in carriages pulled by "Catch Me Who Can" around this track. During these demonstration runs, the locomotive reached a reported speed of between and . The circus closed following a derailment caused by one of the rails breaking underneath the locomotive. While the advantages and applications of steam locomotives had been demonstrated, the venture was a financial failure that played a significant part in Trevithick's bankruptcy in 1809. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, the inventor