That's just moving the goal posts.
For example though,
Railways using wooden tracks, later iron, and the cars pulled by horses appeared as early as the end of the 16th century in Europe. The advantage to this was lowered rolling resistance of the wagon(s) being pulled. These persisted in limited use for the next roughly 200 years. At the end of the 18th century and into the beginning of the 19th century, a number of inventors in England, Scotland, France, the US, etc., all began to experiment with using steam engines to drive ships and land vehicles. For land vehicles, inventors saw replacing existing horse drawn carriages and trains, generally used in mining applications, with a steam engine. Others, like William Murdoch in Scotland did his experiments with models, possibly making him the first model railroader in history.
Many of these early steam engines for railroads were for limited application to existing railroads of very limited length, most often those associated with mining. This was a simple substitution and the mining companies and inventors both saw the practicality of using steam instead of horses within a mine.
By the 1820's to 30's, inventors and entrepreneurs in many countries were now aware of steam engines running on railroads. They saw potential in expanding this to passenger and freight service. Most of the early engines were simply modified copies of the earliest steam engines as these designs were available in publications at the time.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/george-stephensons-first-steam-locomotive
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-first-locomotives/
This is the way most inventions go. There is no one inventor, but rather many who each move forward by watching what others are doing then making improvements in it. When it becomes practical enough to commercialize, they do so with their inventions becoming marketable.
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