The Hetton colliery railway was an long

private railway A private railway is a railroad run by a private business entity (usually a corporation but not need be), as opposed to a railroad run by a public sector. Japan In Japan, , commonly simply ''private railway'', refers to a public transit railway o ...

opened in 1822 by the Hetton Coal Company at Hetton Lyons,

County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

, England. The Hetton was the first railway to be designed from the start to be operated without animal power, as well as being the first entirely new line to be developed by the pioneering

railway engineer Railway engineering is a multi-faceted engineering discipline dealing with the design, construction and operation of all types of rail transport systems. It encompasses a wide range of engineering disciplines, including civil engineering, com ...

George Stephenson George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians In the history of the United Kingdom and the ...

. As originally built, the Hetton colliery railway ran between Hetton Colliery, which was roughly south of

Houghton-le-Spring Houghton-le-Spring ( ) is a town in the City of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, North East England which has its recorded origins in Norman times. Historically in County Durham, it is now administered as part of the Tyne and Wear county. It is ...

, and a

staithe A wharf, quay (, also ), staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more berths (mooring locatio ...

(wharf) on the

River Wear The River Wear (, ) in North East England rises in the Pennines and flows eastwards, mostly through County Durham to the North Sea in the City of Sunderland. At long, it is one of the region's longest rivers, wends in a steep valley through ...

, from where the coal was conveyed further by boat. By its closure in 1959, it was recognised as being the oldest mineral railway in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It ...

History

Background

At the beginning of the 19th century, Hetton was a very small village, located about 3.2 km south of Houghton-le-Spring. By this time, it was already recognised as being on the edge of an exposed area of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

which covered parts of

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land ...

and

; this motivated local landowner Thomas Lyon, as well as his son John Lyon, to prospect for deeper-running seams of coal on their own estate. While multiple attempts had identified the presence of coal,

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

ing and other difficulties complicated efforts to exploit it, while

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...

s of the period were often sceptical that meaningful amounts of coal existed at all, or speculated that they would be of such low quality and quantity that it would not be worth the effort.“Hetton Colliery Railway.”
‘’engineering-timelines.com’’, Retrieved: 17 July 2018. Based on the results of a favourable survey report in April 1816, the Hetton Coal Company was established three years later, becoming County Durham’s first major

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...

in the process; on 13 May 1821, the company signed a mining lease with Lyon. The company’s management, which consisted largely of experienced colliers and local investors, quickly recognised that any large-scale extraction effort would necessitate a means of transporting this coal towards customers, which could be found in the vicinity of the city of

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

. Following a review of various options, it was decided that the use of a

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a p ...

, which would run on an alignment between the colliery and the nearby

, would be the most appropriate measure.

Construction

The pioneering

, was recruited by the company to design the Hetton colliery railway, while his brother, Robert Stephenson, was appointed as the resident engineer to oversee its construction. The line was the first to be designed for being operated without the use of animal power for movement; instead, a combination of self-acting inclines,

stationary engine A stationary engine is an engine whose framework does not move. They are used to drive immobile equipment, such as pumps, generators, mills or factory machinery, or cable cars. The term usually refers to large immobile reciprocating engines, ...

-hauled inclines and locomotive working was used. Adopting a longer but flatter route for the line was deemed to have been less cost efficient than a shorter, more aggressively-inclined one, as this dispensed with numerous cuttings and embankments. Work on the railway commenced prior to the extraction of the first coal from the mine, the first shafts of which being sunk during December 1820. In March 1821, progress on the line had been such that track-laying activity commenced that month. This track used an arrangement of half-lap joints and chairs in a technique that Stephenson, together with the

industrialist A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through per ...

William Losh, had co-

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

ed five years beforehand; the rails, composed of

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuri ...

, were produced at the Walker Ironworks. The Hetton colliery railway was built to Stephenson's standard gauge of , which had already been previously used for the Killingworth wagonway, which Stephenson had been involved in, as well as other sites, such as the

Wallsend Waggonway Wallsend is a town in North Tyneside, England, at the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall. It has a population of 43,842 and lies east of Newcastle upon Tyne. History Roman Wallsend In Roman times, this was the site of the fort of Segedunum. This ...

. One of the more challenging geographical features of the route was Warden Law Hill; this was addressed in the form of a pair of stationary reciprocating engines, each capable of generating up to 44.7 kW of power, which hauled groups of eight wagons. Overall, the route featured a total of five self-acting inclines, where a roped system would allow the ascending empty wagons to be powered up the incline by the momentum of the descending laden wagons. The line also featured a single tunnel, which possessed a length of 1533 yards.

Operations

Early activities

On 18 November 1822, the Hetton colliery railway was officially opened. The first coal extracted by the colliery was transported on a train comprising 17 wagons to four drops at the Sunderland staith. Upon arrival, coal would be tipped onto the timber staith from the assorted wagons, after which it would be stored in a timber building while awaiting shipment. Upon the arrival of a vessel, it would be gravity-loaded directly into the hold via a lengthy chute. However, the company was not fully satisfied with the railway’s early operations. Being much in demand, concerns were raised that the line was not achieving its design capacity. This climate of scepticism heavily contributed to the dismissal of Robert Stephenson in 1823 and his replacement as resident engineer by Joseph Smith; around the same time, William Chapman was appointed to advise on improvements, while George Dodds was given the position of railway superintendent during the following year. During 1823, various works upon the railway were carried out, presumably these are attributabled to Chapman; changes included the installation of a third stationary engine, which was operational by 1826, for working the Warden Law incline, while an extra gravity incline was established at the staith to shorten the chute distance. Demand for the railway continued to grow; by 1825-6, it was also carrying coal from collieries at Elemore, Eppleton and North Hetton, which were serviced via gravity incline branches that connected onto the main line. By the 1850s, the development of considerably more-powerful steam engines enabled locomotive working to be reinstated along the 'long run' of the colliery line. It was around this time, the complex of sidings and engineering workshops at Hetton were substantially enlarged, while a 1.2 km branch line, running southwards to a coal depot in Easington Lane, was constructed.

Later activities

During 1888, the Hetton Coal Company became Hetton Coal Co. Ltd. By 1894,

electric light An electric light, lamp, or light bulb is an electrical component that produces light. It is the most common form of artificial lighting. Lamps usually have a base made of ceramic, metal, glass, or plastic, which secures the lamp in the soc ...

ing had been installed around the shaft sidings, while the colliery, which by this point employed 1,051 workers, was reportedly producing roughly 1,000 tonnes of coal per day. From 1831, the Marquis of Londonderry had developed the nearby Rainton and Seaham Railway, which was a relatively a similar rope-worked incline railway which ran from

West Rainton West Rainton is a village in the civil parish of West Rainton and Leamside, in County Durham, England. It is situated between Durham and Houghton-le-Spring. Leamside is about to the west, and the south-western end of the village is known by ...

to his newly developed docks at

Seaham Seaham is a seaside town in County Durham, England. Located on the Durham Coast, Seaham is situated south of Sunderland and east of Durham. The town grew from the late 19th century onwards as a result of investments in its harbour and ...

. However, after the line closed in 1896, the Hetton Railway bought the section which ran from its Moorsley Pit to the top of the Copt Hill engine, and integrated it into its workings. During mid-1902, The Engineer noted that one of the original Stephson-built locomotives was still in operational use at the colliery, still drawing the coal trucks at Hetton; the publication remarked that it was “now the oldest working locomotive in the world". After Lambton Collieries merged with Hetton Collieries in 1911, the companies also amalgamated their respective railway operations. Accordingly, the still-rope incline-worked Hetton system was merged with the locomotive-operated Lambton Railway; furthermore, the company also developed a new connection from the Lambton staithes to the Hetton staithes within the Port of Sunderland. During 1947, control of the line passed to the new

state-owned State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public owne ...

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "ve ...

. As a result of a decision to concentrate the extraction of coal for this area at the Hawthorn Combined Mine (adjacent to the former

Durham and Sunderland Railway The York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway (YN&BR) was an English railway company formed in 1847 by the amalgamation of the York and Newcastle Railway and the Newcastle and Berwick Railway. Both companies were part of the group of business interest ...

), the Hetton system was permanently closed on 12 September 1959. A further spate of closures occurred during 1967, including Lambton Staithes being closed in January, and the line to Pallion being closed in August of the same year. The last section, from Silksworth Colliery to Railway Row coal land sale finally closed in 1972. Since then, multiple stretches of the former trackbed have been converted to form parts of the Stephenson Trail, a combined pedestrian and cycle route.

Locomotives

The first five locomotives build for the line were constructed by Stephenson between 1820 and 1822. These were a development of those which had been built for

Killingworth Killingworth, formerly Killingworth Township, is a town in North Tyneside, England. Killingworth was built as a planned town in the 1960s, next to Killingworth Village, which existed for centuries before the Township. Other nearby towns an ...

, possessing a

0-4-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven. The wheels on the earliest four-coupled locomotives were ...

wheel configuration, which used chain-coupled wheels. Reportedly, four of these had been given names: ''Hetton'', ''Dart'', ''Tallyho'' and ''Star''. These locomotives incorporated steam springs, a feature co-patented by Stephenson and Losh, which attempted to compensate for the reaction to the vertical cylinders, a factor which had caused previous locomotives to rock excessively, and were not entirely successful. For some time, a section of the line was an inclined plane, which was operated by a number of stationary engines. The 1822 engine, however, continued in service until 1912, being rebuilt in both 1857 and 1882; it is currently preserved in the Shildon Locomotion Museum. It has been claimed that the preserved locomotive may not in fact be the genuine article, such as it potentially being an 1850s-era

replica A 1:1 replica is an exact copy of an object, made out of the same raw materials, whether a molecule, a work of art, or a commercial product. The term is also used for copies that closely resemble the original, without claiming to be identical. Al ...

which had been produced at the behest of Sir Lindsay Wood. During 1884, the Company acquired

limited liability Limited liability is a legal status in which a person's financial liability is limited to a fixed sum, most commonly the value of a person's investment in a corporation, company or partnership. If a company that provides limited liability to it ...

, shortly after which it built two additional locomotives, named ''Lyons'' and ''Eppleton''. These featured several improvements over their earlier brethren, such as the use of a gear-driven

T wheel configuration and being furnished with vertically-mounted boilers. Nonetheless, the original batch continued to be used alongside the newer models for many decades; at least one was still in active service by the arrival of the 20th century.