Although the general conditions of the pioneer railways were, apparently, so primitive, some of the lines were more ambitious and more costly than might, at first, be supposed. Among them were lines from five to ten miles in extent which served the double purpose of (1) enabling collieries in, for example, the Hinterland of the Tyne to benefit from the ever-expanding trade in coal; and (2) providing them with the means of discharging direct into the colliers below Newcastle bridge, thus saving the preliminary transport in, and transshipment from, the coal barges on the river. In these five- or ten-mile distances there were often considerable declivities to overcome, in order that the ideal of a gradual descent should be secured, and the cuttings, embankments, bridges and other works thus carried out were often closely akin to much of the railway construction with which we are familiar to-day. Thus Dr. Stukeley, in his "Itinerarium Curiosum," says in describing the visit he paid to the Tanfield Collieries, Durham, in 1725:—
"We saw Col. Lyddal's coal-works at Tanfield, where he carries the road over valleys filled with earth, 100 foot high, 300 foot broad at bottom: other valleys as large have a stone bridge laid across:[[31]] in other places hills are cut through for half a mile together; and in this manner a road is made, and frames of timber laid, for five miles to the river-side."
Arthur Young, also, who visited the Newcastle-on-Tyne district in 1768, says in his "Six Months Tour through the North of England": "The coal waggon roads from the pits to the water are great works carried over all sorts of inequalities of ground so far as the distance of nine or ten miles."
The staiths at the river end of the Tyne railways are described in the "Commercial and Agricultural Magazine" as "solid buildings, two stories high; into the upper story the waggon-way enters, and a spout projecting over the river shoots the coals into the keels, or a trap-door drops the coals into the lower story, whence they must be shovelled into the keels afterwards."
John Francis expresses the opinion, in his "History of the English Railway" (1851), that probably by 1750 there was scarcely an important colliery that had not its own railway. Such lines as these, however, were of a private character, serving the interests only of the companies or the individuals making them, without offering transport facilities to other traders in return for tolls, and requiring no Act of Parliament so long as they retained this character, did not require to cross public roads, and could be constructed by agreement among the landowners concerned. The more important development came when the canal companies themselves desired to supplement their canals by railways which anyone paying the stipulated tolls could use in connection with canal transport. Under these conditions the companies had to seek for further powers from Parliament, and this they began to do about the middle of the eighteenth century.
The Trent and Mersey Canal Act of 1776, for example, authorised the construction of a "rail-way" from the canal to the Froghall quarries, a distance of three and a half miles.[[32]] In 1802 the same company obtained authority to construct three "railways" extending from their canal in various directions. The preamble of the Act (42 Geo. III. c. 25) recited that the lines would be of "great advantage to the extensive manufactories of earthenware ... and of public utility," and the Act accordingly sanctioned the lines "for the passage of waggons and carriages of forms and constructions, and with burthens suitable to such railways, to be approved by the company," at rates duly specified. These various railways, together with the Trent and Mersey Canal itself, were, in 1846, taken over by the North Staffordshire Railway Company, whose general manager, Mr W. D. Phillipps, informs me that portions of two of them are still in daily use. They are laid with cast-iron tram plates, with flanges to keep the wheels in place, and ordinary waggons and carts use them to get from the canal basin to the high road, a few hundred yards away, the same rate of toll being charged as on the canal. Mr Phillipps further says: "Our Froghall tramway rises 400 feet from the level of the canal to the quarry, passing by means of a tunnel through an intermediate hill, and it is worked entirely by gravitation, there being four inclined planes of various lengths and inclinations. The gauge is 3 feet 6 inches. It is practically the same as when laid down over 100 years ago. We convey over it nearly 500,000 tons of limestone annually, and I find it a cheap and expeditious mode of conveyance."
I would call special attention to these details because it was, no doubt, the fact that ordinary road carts, with flat-edged wheels, could be taken along the flanged plates of the early railways, and were so taken under authority of the Acts of Parliament here in question, that originally established the idea both of a common user of the railways by traders employing their own vehicles upon them and of competition being thus ensured between different carriers. The pioneer public railways, provided as accessories to canal transport, were, indeed, looked upon as simply a variation, in principle, of the ordinary turnpike road. They were roads furnished with rails, and available for use, on payment of the authorised tolls, by anyone whose cart-wheels were the right distance apart.
The position in this respect was entirely changed when the system of railway operation came to be definitely fixed on the principle of edge-rails and flanged wheels, with locomotives in place of horses; yet the legislation immediately following the spread of railways on this vastly different basis was still determined, as regarded their use by the public, by the precedent originally established under the conditions here narrated.
While thus operated on the toll principle of a turnpike road—the pioneer "railway stations" being themselves simply the equivalent of toll-houses—the early railways were all associated with canal or river transport. Robert Fulton says in his "Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation" (1796) that "Rail-roads have hitherto been considered as a medium between lock-canals and cartage, in consequence of the expence of extending the canal to the particular works in its neighbourhood"; and, in the course of a detailed argument in favour of small boats, of from two to five tons burden, in preference to the unduly large ones—as he considered them—then in vogue, he adds: "Rail-ways of one mile or thereabouts will, no doubt, be frequently necessary, where it may be difficult to find water at the extremity, or when the trade from the works is not sufficient to pay the expence of machinery,[[33]] and, its extent being one mile, can be of little importance to the country."
That Parliament itself, at this time, looked upon railways only as accessories to canals is shown by a reference to the "House of Commons Journals," where, under date June 19, 1799, it is reported that a Committee appointed, on the 10th of the same month, "to consider the expediency of requiring notices to be given of an intended application to Parliament for leave to bring in a Bill for the making of Ways or Roads usually called Railways or Dram Roads, or for the renewal or alteration of an Act passed for that purpose," had adopted the following resolution: "That it is the opinion of this Committee, That the Standing Orders of the House of the 7th of May, 1794, relating to Bills for making Navigable Canals, Aqueducts and the Navigation of Rivers, or for altering any Act of Parliament for any or either of those purposes, be extended to Bills for making any Ways or Roads, commonly called Railways or Dram Roads, except so much of the said Standing Orders as requires," etc. The resolution was agreed to by the House on the 25th of the same month.