Stockton and Darlington Railway

“ Can you enumerate any instance in which a particular advantage is given to landholders by the line of Railroad passing through their property, or near to them?
The Stockton and Darlington Railway have paid great sums to landowners for gravel, for timber, and stone taken out of their estates, for the making of bricks and a variety of other purposes; they have paid very large sums. ”

“ Before the Hetton Railway was opened Stephenson was busy on a larger work. Parliament had given a franchise for a railway in Durham County, some twenty miles long, through Darlington to Stockton. The function of the road was to carry coal to a shipping pier, and it was not at all settled that horses would not be used to draw the cars. While not much was known about railways, and very little about locomotives, there was a growing conviction that there was great economy in the use of tramways and the steam-engine, and the prospect brightened for building the road. ”

“ Communications.—Railway communication is provided entirely by the North Eastern company. The main line runs northward through Darlington, Durham and Gateshead, and there are a large number of branches through the mining and industrial districts, while the company also owns some of the docks. From Stockton to Darlington ran the railway engineered by George Stephenson and opened in 1825. The chief ports of Durham are Jarrow and South Shields on the Tyne, Sunderland at the mouth of the Wear, Seaham Harbour, Hartlepool East and West and Stockton-on-Tees. ”

“ Naturally there were many minor defects in the construction of this first locomotive, although most of them were too trivial and unimportant to affect the excellence of the machine as a whole. But it had one serious defect: the inclination of the cylinders caused the entire machine to rise and fall on its springs at every double stroke, producing great unsteadiness when running at any considerable speed. This was corrected a few months later by the suggestion of Timothy Hackworth, who drew plans for a locomotive having horizontal cylinders to be used on the Stockton & Darlington Railway. ”

“ Here and there scattered scientific men, ever since Watt’s perfection of the steam-engine, had considered the possibility of travel by steam, but practical business men had failed to come forward to build a railway line. At length, however, Edward Pease, of Darlington, planned a road to run from Stockton to Darlington, and set about building it. ”