In the first instance projections were cast on the rails to allow of their being attached to the wooden sleepers; but, as these projections were found to break easily, they were cast separately in the form of "pedestals," or "chairs," into which, after they had been fastened to the sleepers, the rails could be fixed with pieces of wood.
Mr Brunlees is of opinion that the plating of rails with a steel surface was probably begun about 1854, and that it was not until eight or ten years later they were made entirely of steel. "Now," he said in his address, "owing to the improvements in the manufacture of steel rails, they can be produced as easily and as cheaply as iron rails."
The adoption of the designation "Iron," as applied to the railway systems abroad, was probably influenced to some extent by Thomas Gray's "Observations on a General Iron Rail-way." First published in 1820, the work had gone through five editions by 1825, and in a letter addressed, in 1845, to Sir Robert Peel, urging the claims of Gray to generous treatment by the State, on the ground of his being the "author" (sic) of the railway system, Thomas Wilson wrote: "His name and his fame were spreading in other lands; his work was translated into all the European languages, and to the impression produced by it may be attributes the popular feeling throughout Germany and France in favour of rail-road which has terminated in the adoption of his railway system in Germany and Belgium especially."
The stone bridge here referred to allowed of an easy transport across the valley from the collieries to the Tyne. Constructed by a local mason, the bridge soon fell down, and was rebuilt in 1727, the architect thereupon committing suicide to spare himself the anxiety of any possible further collapse of his work. In Brand's "History and Antiquities of Newcastle" (1789) it is stated that the span of the bridge was 103 feet, that the height was 63 feet, and that the cost of the structure was £1200.
In the Company's further Acts of 1783 and 1785 this line was still spoken of as a "rail-way," with the hyphen; but in their Act of 1797 it had become a railway—without the hyphen.