Phoenix

Phoenix was an 0-2-2 locomotive built by Robert Stephenson & Co. in 1830 for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, one of the early fleet of locomotives that operated on the world's first inter-city steam passenger railway in the crucial months following the opening of the L&MR in September 1830. Phoenix was a development of the Rocket-type, incorporating improvements that Stephenson was rapidly making to the basic design in response to operational experience on the Liverpool and Manchester in the first months of revenue service.

The early Liverpool and Manchester fleet — including Phoenix, North Star, Meteor, Comet, Arrow, and others — represented Stephenson's rapid evolution of the steam locomotive from the Rainhill Trials design through a succession of improved types in 1830–1831. Each new locomotive incorporated lessons from the previous ones: improved boiler design, better valve events, more reliable axle and bearing arrangements, and the addition of the trailing axle (as on the Patentee type) that transformed stability at higher speeds. Phoenix was part of this evolutionary process, one step in the rapid refinement of the steam express locomotive in its first operational years.

No original Phoenix survives — the early L&MR locomotives were all withdrawn and scrapped as more capable types became available through the 1840s — but the National Railway Museum holds documentary and material evidence of the early L&MR fleet, and the surviving Rocket (in its later modified form) at the NRM York gives the best impression of the locomotive type Phoenix and its contemporaries represented.