A brief history of model engineering
Author: Jamie Taylor
“What have model engineers ever done for us,” you may ask? Well, more than you might think. Today's model engineers come from a venerable line of boundary-pushing, risk-taking visionaries. Without the graft and innovation of these hardy souls, the history of the railways would be very different.
In fact, it's from model engineering that we can trace the birth of the steam-powered railway.
In the late eighteenth century, with full-sized prototypes expensive and dangerous to make, early pioneers turned to modelling as a way of proving their ideas.
The first working model locomotive was built by William Murdoch in 1784 and was said to be able to reach 8 miles per hour, a frightening speed for the time.