The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson / Comprising Also a History of the Invention and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive

by Samuel Smiles

The traffic of all sorts increased so steadily and so rapidly that considerable difficulty was experienced in working it satisfactorily. It had been provided by the first Stockton and Darlington Act that the line should be free to all parties who chose to use it at certain prescribed rates, and that any person might put horses and wagons on the railway, and carry for himself. But this arrangement led to increasing confusion and difficulty, and could not continue in the face of a large and rapidly-increasing traffic. The goods trains got so long that the carriers found it necessary to call in the aid of the locomotive engine to help them on their way. Then mixed trains of passengers and merchandise began to run; and the result was that the Railway Company found it necessary to take the entire charge and working of the traffic. In course of time new coaches were specially built for the better accommodation of the public, until at length regular passenger-trains were run, drawn by the locomotive engine, though this was not until after the Liverpool and Manchester Company had established this as a distinct branch of their traffic.

The three Stephenson locomotives were from the first regularly employed to work the coal-trains, and their proved efficiency for this purpose led to the gradual increase of the locomotive power. The speed of the engine—slow though it seems now—was in those days regarded as something marvelous. A race actually came off between No. 1 engine, the "Locomotion," and one of the stage-coaches traveling from Darlington to Stockton by the ordinary road, and it was regarded as a great triumph of mechanical skill that the locomotive reached Stockton first, beating the stage-coach by about a hundred yards! The same engine continued in good working order in the year 1846, when it headed the railway procession on the opening of the Middlesborough and Redcar Railway, traveling at the rate of about fourteen miles an hour. This engine, the first that traveled on the first public locomotive railway, has recently been placed upon a pedestal in front of the railway station at Darlington.

For some years, however, the principal haulage of the line was performed by horses. The inclination of the gradients being toward the sea, this was perhaps the cheapest mode of traction, so long as the traffic was not very large. The horse drew the train along the level road until, on reaching a descending gradient, down which the train ran by its own gravity, the animal was unharnessed, when, wheeling round to the other end of the wagons, to which a "dandy-cart" was attached, its bottom being only a few inches from the rail, and bringing his step into unison with the speed of the train, he leaped nimbly into his place in the hind car, which was usually fitted with a well-filled hay-rack.

THE NO. 1 ENGINE AT DARLINGTON.

The details of the working were gradually perfected by experience, the projectors of the line being scarcely conscious at first of the importance and significance of the work which they had taken in hand, and little thinking that they were laying the foundations of a system which was yet to revolutionize the internal communications of the world, and confer the greatest blessings on mankind. It is important to note that the commercial results of the enterprise were considered satisfactory from the opening of the railway. Besides conferring a great public benefit upon the inhabitants of the district, and throwing open entirely new markets for the almost boundless stores of coal found in the Bishop Auckland district, the profits derived from the traffic created by the railway enabled increasing dividends to be paid to those who had risked their capital in the undertaking, and thus held forth an encouragement to the projectors of railways generally, which was not without an important effect in stimulating the projection of similar enterprises in other districts. These results, as displayed in the annual dividends, must have been eminently encouraging to the astute commercial men of Liverpool and Manchester, who were then engaged in the prosecution of their railway. Indeed, the commercial success of the Stockton and Darlington Company may be justly characterized as the turning-point of the railway system. With that practical illustration daily in sight of the public, it was no longer possible for Parliament to have prevented its eventual extension.

Before leaving the subject of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, we can not avoid alluding to one of its most remarkable and direct results—the creation of the town of Middlesborough-on-Tees. When the railway was opened in 1825, the site of this future metropolis of Cleveland was occupied by one solitary farm-house and its out-buildings. All round was pasture-land or mud-banks; scarcely another house was within sight. The corporation of the town of Stockton being unwilling or unable to provide accommodation for the rapidly increasing coal traffic, Mr. Edward Pease, in 1829, joined by a few of his Quaker friends, bought about 500 or 600 acres of land five miles lower down the river—the site of the modern Middlesborough—for the purpose of there forming a new sea-port for the shipment of coals brought to the Tees by the railway. The line was accordingly extended thither; docks were excavated; a town sprang up; churches, chapels, and schools were built, with a custom-house, mechanics' institute, banks, ship-building yards, and iron factories, and in a few years the port of Middlesborough became one of the most thriving on the northeast coast of England. In ten years a busy population of some 6000 persons (since swelled to about 25,000) occupied the site of the original farm-house. More recently, the discovery of vast stores of ironstone in the Cleveland Hills, close adjoining Middlesborough, has tended still more rapidly to augment the population and increase the commercial importance of the place.

It is pleasing to relate, in connection with this great work—the Stockton and Darlington Railway, projected by Edward Pease and executed by George Stephenson—that when Mr. Stephenson became a prosperous and a celebrated man, he did not forget the friend who had taken him by the hand, and helped him on in his early days. He continued to remember Mr. Pease with gratitude and affection, and that gentleman, to the close of his life, was proud to exhibit a handsome gold watch, received as a gift from his celebrated protégé, bearing these words—"Esteem and gratitude: from George Stephenson to Edward Pease."

MIDDLESBOROUGH-ON-TEES.