Introductory page 3

In 1812 Stephenson was appointed engine-wright at Killingworth High Pit at a salary of £100 a year, and in riding about inspecting the collieries belonging to the same owners and others he became interested in the new railway between the Kenton and Coxlodge collieries and the Tyne. This had the Blenkinsop rail and engines. Next year, at Mr. Blackett's suggestion, William Hedley, who had found by an experiment confirming Trevithick's experience that smooth wheels had sufficient adhesion on smooth rails for the gradients on the Wylam track, built Puffing Billy.

At first this, like his experimental engine of 1811, which was a failure, had four wheels, but as it broke down the cast-iron plate track, it was in 1815 made an eight-wheeler, each group of four wheels being carried on a sort of bogie. In 1830 the line was relaid with cast-iron edge rails, and then Billy was altered and became a four-wheeler again. This engine from the first was a great improvement on the horses, and was actually kept at work until 1862; it is now at South Kensington. The sister engine, Wylam Dilly, which worked on until 1867, is in the Edinburgh Museum. Stephenson carefully watched them working on the road that ran past the cottage in which he was born in 1781, and came to the conclusion he could improve upon them as well as on the Coxlodge engines; and in 1814 he built Blucher, his first locomotive. To begin with, this was rather a failure, but as soon as he turned the waste steam into the funnel as Trevithick had done he doubled the power and made it a success, thus leading on to his Killingworth engine of 1815. At first this had coupling-rods placed upon inside cranks between the wheels, but owing to one of the crank axles getting bent he replaced the rods with the chain gearing familiar to us in the bicycle.

The same chain-coupling with the sprocket wheels was used in his engine of 1816. In 1817 the Duke of Portland ordered one of these engines for his Kilmarnock & Troon line, the first locomotive to be worked in Scotland, but the cast-iron wheels damaged the cast-iron track and were ingeniously replaced by wooden ones.

Some of the Scottish tram-roads are very early in date. When Johnnie Cope fought the battle of Prestonpans he placed his artillery on the tram-road from Tranent to Cockenzie; the Carron Ironworks put down lines soon after their opening in 1760; most of the collieries in Midlothian, Fife, Lanark, and Ayrshire had their iron roads; and in 1810 matters were so far advanced that Telford surveyed the route of a railway from Glasgow to Berwick. In the south steam traction did not progress very much, but it did not die out. All along a few Trevithick engines appear to have been working in South Wales; and in 1814 William Stewart built a locomotive for the Park End Colliery in Gloucestershire, which was tried on the Lydney line, now the joint property of the Midland and Great Western.

The engines were waiting for the roads to be strong enough to carry them. Cast-iron rails continued to be used owing to their cheapness, but rails had here and there been made of wrought iron for some years. When Timothy Hackworth went to Walbottle Colliery as foreman of the smiths he found rails of malleable iron which had been laid by Nixon in 1805; and in 1808 wrought-iron rails were in use on the Tindale Fell line, a specimen of which, merely a square bar spiked to stone blocks, is at South Kensington (M. 2487). Then in 1820 came John Birkinshaw (No. 4503) to do with his mill for the rail what Henry Maudslay did with his slide-rest for the engine cylinder. To quote Thomas Baker, the poet of the "Steam Engine"

"By rolling-mill he these tough rails produced,
And these, without improvement, still are used,
No hammer-work, unseemly weld, or flaw
Was in the work of famous Birkinshaw!"

But enough of these old roads. The year the first engine went to Scotland a railway was projected from Darlington to Stockton-on-Tees. By it was the experience gained on the colliery lines to be utilised for the public benefit; with it the railway age, as most people know it, really opened. How it rapidly developed under Stephen-son's influence from a railroad to be worked by horses into one worked by steam, and led to all being worked by steam, we shall see in the story of the North Eastern.

The order in which our home railways should be dealt with we will leave for others to discuss. If we were to choose the oldest, and reckon the age from the earliest line it absorbed, we should probably begin with the Caledonian. If we were to arrange them according to their present position the task would be more difficult, for the Midland has the largest capital and the largest stock of carriages and trucks; the North Western takes the most money and has the greatest number of engines; the Great Eastern carries the most passengers; the North Eastern carries the most minerals and the most merchandise; and the Great Western is by far the longest and its trains travel the most miles. Let us follow Bradshaw and begin with the Great Western, which is the oldest of the great companies bearing the original name.