Letter: Rudely interrupted

CONTRARY TO what Beryl Bainbridge says ("And the whisky was served in pint glasses", 19 December), Stephenson's Rocket had its inaugural run on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway as the most successful entrant in the Rainhill Trials in 1829. The other two contenders were Stephenson's "Locomotion No 1" and the Braithwaite and Ericsson "Novelty".

William Huskisson MP was run down during the grand opening of the railway in 1830. The accident occurred not at Edge Hill but at Parkside, near Newton-le-Willows, some 17 miles to the west, where a lineside memorial to the MP still stands.

"Getting off at Edge Hill" is Scouse for coitus interruptus, because Edge Hill station offers the last possible opportunity to alight before encountering, in Fritz Spiegl's felicitous phrase, the "vertiginous descent through the caverns to the terminus at Lime Street".