I agree. These engineers builders etc many of who could barely read or write produced things of wonderment in my view.

One such as Blenkinsop stuck with rack locomotion for many years for the simple expedient that the cast rails of the time meant engines of low weight and rail adhesion. His rack locomotives could haul 90 tons unlike Stephenson's and other designers adhesion engines that could barely manage 30 tons and on wet days half that amount and did so day in day out for 20 years, so successful were they that at least twelve were constructed and sold to other collieries including one or two over seas.

Other engineers took a different view which eventually become viable when better rails came into being.

Obviously these chaps didn't just have engineering as the basis of their designs but were fiscally aware of what their designs meant, ( Blenkinsop for one quickly took out a patient on his rack method and made sure it was franchised to those who took it up ),something that seems lacking in many latter-day design considerations.