'The Rocket' locomotive engine - Stephenson

We are going to start this week with a BANG! A Rocket no less from the Mason collection but this was as Carol would say "out forring!" Mason had many shots in his collection that came from sources other than his own photography. The wonderful Rocket was the wonder of its age and has lost none of its appeal for anoraks and children!..With thanks in particular today to derangedlemur ( /photos/8468254@N02/ ) , sharon.corbet ( /photos/129555378@N07/ ) , beachcomberaustralia ( /photos/beachcomberaustralia/ ) , and O Mac ( /photos/91549360@N03/ ) , it seems likely that this item from the Mason Collection is a copy of a similar image used for a turn-of-century London and North Western Railway ( London_and_North_Western_Railway ) postcard. While the whiteout on the background make it difficult to judge scale or location, today's contributors highlight the similarity with this LNWR postcard from 1904 ( 20160315003700/http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTAxN1gxNjAw/z/j8MAAOSwEgVWR92O/$_57.JPG ) , likely making the engine shown a late-19th/early-20th century replica or model. O Mac offers a concrete theory that what we see here therefore is a model built by the chief mechanical engineer of the LNWR in the mid-1880s, for the Liverpool Exhibition of 1887......Photographer: Thomas H. Mason..Collection: Mason Photographic Collection ( http://catalogue.nli.ie/Collection/vtls000029624 ) ..Date: ca. 1890-1910..NLI Ref: M24/62/4 ( http://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000539122 ) ..You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie ( http://catalogue.nli.ie )