Pyall (Henry) after Thomas Talbot Bury.

plate 5 from ‘Coloured Views of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway’, originally published as 6 plates to commemorate the railway’s opening, but soon expanded to 13, such was the popularity George Stephenson’s feat of engineering, a reflection of the excitement at the brightening dawn of this new era of transportation, as the second significant railway to open after the Stockton to Darlington line, responding to increasing commercial and industrial demands for the more rapid movement of goods and materials, and being the first to be powered entirely by steam locomotives, apart from the short and steep incline through Wapping Tunnel between Edge-Hill and Liverpool Docks, where a cable system was deployed, here depicting one of the greatest challenges to face Stephenson, crossing the expansive peat bog of Chat Moss, about 5 miles west of Manchester, achieved with the the advice of Robert Stannard, an expert on East Anglian marshland, who ran the track over a floating bed of bound heather and branches below a layer of rubble and tar,

original hand-coloured aquatint, heightened with gum-arabic, 225 x 260 mm. (8 7/8 x 10 1/4 in), slight browning, a small loss in the upper margin, well outside the platemark,