Who was more important for the history of the railways: George Stephenson or Isambard Kingdom Brunel?
both men were very important to the development of the railways and if you had to choose one person to represent that history there are arguments for both men stephenson because he was generally recognised to be the first to develop a moving steam train engine (notwithstanding trevithicks claims) brunel for his standardisation of the rail system and building a network on balance – for the railways alone i’d say stephenson was the right choice – he designed the first real working locomotive, brunel developed the work but without stephenson’s work he would have had nothing to work with – he may or not not have developed an engine – no-one will ever know, because stephenson was there before him
