Category: Railways

Walbottle Moors Waggonway

28/12/2013

Walbottle Moor Waggonway is known to have been in operation from 1769. This Waggonway ran from old pits north of Hexham Road past the location of Duke Pit in Walbottle down to coal staiths on the River Tyne at Lemington. The network is one of the last surviving examples of an 18th century waggonway to survive in Newcastle.

The system was still in use in 1860, using horses and employing 50 keelmen at the riverside staiths for transport down river.

This now disused network provides the village of Walbottle with picturesque paths allowing easy access to the surrounding countryside. These waggonways also have historic importance due to their connection with railway pioneer George Stephenson, who as a boy worked on them as a fireman and horse driver.

'Waggonways Walk' marker, Black Callerton. Photo A Curtis (2013).

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Welcome Home Puffing Billy

18/10/2013

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This was a Poem of the Day by Anthony Todd of Howdon, Wallsend published in the Newcastle Journal. It nicely sums up events at the festival on Saturday 21st September in Wylam to celebrate the 200 year anniversary of Puffing Billy.

'Welcome Home Puffing Billy'
by Anthony Todd

Wylam on a sunny Saturday
People came from near and far
To experience culture and have fun
William Hedley's descendant Mark Beattie
Opened Puffing Billy day
With a friendly welcome for all
Local songs colour the air
Hexham Lasses and The Blaydon Races
Soaring away on the wings of The Red Kite
As the Stocksfield Stompers play
Their talent shining through
On this sunny day people are having fun
Coal and spoon races
Time trials by Wylam Brownies
Puffing Billy themed shopping trollies on the waggonway
The Elaine Milbourne Dancers
A juxtaposition of the contemporary with the age of steam
Strutting their stuff
Making dexterous moves
To songs from the musicals
And modern dance
Choo Choo Ch'Boogie and The Trolley Song
Everybody doing the locomotion
On this day to remember William Hedley
And Puffing Billy, displayed near the old railway
The star of the show
Puffing Billy as black as coal
Coal that put fire in metallic veins
That powered cogs, wheels and cranks
Steam moving through them
Bringing the locomotive to life
Expelling smoke like a dark, demonic fire-breathing dragon
Hadrian Cloggers dancing merrily
Accompanied by the accordion
Wooden clogs beating in time with the music
Keeping to the rhythm
Like the cadence of wheels on rails
When Billy worked on local waggonways
Hauling coal from Wylam to the Tyne
In chaldron waggons, chuffing puffing along
A marvel of engineering in its own time

Puffing Billy Festival, Wylam. Photo A Curtis (2013).

Links

Puffing Billy Festival - details
photos

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Memories of Wooden Waggonways and Wylam Dilly

6/10/2013

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The text below is a transcription of an article published in the now-defunct York Herald, on Monday 27 September 1875, page 6, col 2.

It recounts memories of some 40 or 45 years earlier about certain Tyneside wooden waggonways and the early steam locomotives operating on the Wylam Waggonway.

The author is unnamed but clearly had a close connection and interest in the events taking place around him. It is possible that the newspaper is merely recycling an article previously published in a more local journal but if so I have yet to discover the original source.

The Coal Waggon - Northumberland Archives Ref. ZMD 78/14.

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Tale of the Model Steam Locomotive at Close House

6/10/2013

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Isaac Jackson shows his model locomotive at Close House. Illustration by Bethany Whitehead (2013).

The illustration (above) for this story was kindly provided by Bethany Whitehead especially for this blog. Her work is showcased on Tumblr as Bethany Bluebell Illustration and is well worth a look.

The series of talks on early railways set up for the 2013 Puffing Billy Festival has been both informative and entertaining. However, the one on 25th September by Jim Rees entitled Hedley, Chapman and Isaac Jackson - who really did what? provided a gem of a story with a local interest that I just had to follow up.

Unlike my recent blog, Puffing Billy & the Heddon Balloon, where my early railway connection with Close House was somewhat fanciful, this story incorporates both real old news reports and cutting-edge research. That account also has one of Bethany Whitehead's drawings.

It's worth pointing out here that Close House always was, and still is, firmly in the parish of Heddon on the Wall, but is often referred to in the press as Close House, near Wylam, or worse, Wylam's Close House. This fact was pointed out in a letter to the Hexham Courant by Ian Armstrong, Chairman of Heddon Parish Council, published Monday, 1st October 2012.

I would like to thank Jim Rees (now at Beamish Museum) for providing much of the information I have used below. It was published in Early Railways 4 (Ed. G Boyes, 2010; ER4) as a followup section to his paper, The Sans Pareil Model: its purpose and possible origins, read at the Fourth International Early Railways Conference. The field of early railway research is a complicated and confusing one and any mistakes in the report below are my own, due both to my poor note keeping during Jim's lecture, and my even worse understanding of the issues and engineering.

Among the many things I learned in this talk, completely new to me, was about another Wylam man, Isaac Jackson, and his possible, mostly unsung, role in assisting in the local development of early steam locomotives that was taking place around him.

The 'Stephenson 1828' model, attributed to Isaac Jackson by Jim Rees. Early Railways 4 (2010).

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Puffing Billy & the Heddon Balloon

15/9/2013

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Illustration and text by kind permission of Bethany Whitehead (2013).

I found the amusing cartoon above when scouring the web for pictures of Puffing Billy that could be of interest for the Puffing Billy Festival. It was drawn by Bethany Whitehead as her entry in 2013 for the Macmillan Prize for Children’s Book Illustration, entitled The Grand Adventure of Professor Meriwether and his ship Spiritus and she has very kindly allowed me to use it here. Her work is showcased on Tumblr as Bethany Bluebell Illustration and is well worth a look.

I also realised that it would make the ideal illustration for an historical local event that took place on 8th September 1831 during celebrations in Newcastle for the coronation of King William IV who died without legitimate children in 1837 and was succeeded by his niece, Queen Victoria.

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The Waggoner, traditional Tyneside song

14/8/2013

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The Waggoner is a a traditional Tyneside ballad of the Great Northern Coalfield from the days of horse-drawn waggonways which carried coal from the colliery to staiths on the River Tyne. Songs like these were originally passed down by oral repetition and are thus subject to many changes over the course of time.

The version set down by in 1812 by John Bell, a Gateshead land surveyor, in his Rhymes of Northern Bards is shown below:

Rhymes of Northern Bards by John Bell (1812).

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Excavation of waggonway in Newcastle

27/7/2013

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Archaeologists looking for Roman remains have stumbled across an even more historic find - a wooden railway which was instrumental in the development of the Industrial Revolution.

An excavation on the banks of the Tyne unearthed a stretch of waggonway which is more than 200 years old, making it the earliest surviving example of the standard-gauge railway.

The discovery was originally part of a network which linked the ports of the North East with collieries in Tyneside and Northumberland in the late 18th century.

Photo from The Daily Mail, 26 July 2013.

The waggonway is made up of a heavy duty 'main way' with two sets of rails laid on top of each other to preserve their longevity, with a loop from the main line descending into a dip.

That depression would have been filled with water where coal wagons' wooden wheels were rested to stop them drying out and cracking. In the middle of the loop is a stone elevation where the horse pulling the waggon would have stood. It is the first time such a 'Watering Pond' has been recorded, although previously known from maps.

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Wylam Waggonway

9/6/2013

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To focus my mind on the Wylam Waggonway for the Puffing Billy Festival I decided to create a map of the waggonway so that I could discuss some things that interest me along its route. As always I am particularly interested in finding clues to the past which can still be seen today.

This will be an ongoing blog and I will add to it as I feel inspired.

View Wylam Waggonway in a larger map

Key to map above:
Red: North Wylam, Newburn & Scotswood Railway where it diverges from the route of the former Waggonway.
Blue: approximate route of Wylam Waggonway (1859 Map)
Green: Mineral line (single track) closely parallel to railway line (double track) - possibly on the original waggonway line.
Purple: Early Throckley Waggonway (1859 map)
Pink: Later Throckley Waggonway (1897 map)
Yellow: Throckley Isabella Mineral Railway (1897 map)
Light Blue: North Walbottle Waggonway (1859 Map)
Yellow Pin: Named feature

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Lemington Staiths and Lemington Gut

30/5/2013

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As part of my research for the Puffing Billy Festival this summer I decided to see what I could find out about the eastern end of the Wylam Waggonway. This was built to carry coal from Wylam Colliery to coal staiths on the River Tyne at Lemington.

Lemington Gut - the former course of the River Tyne - from the new bridge at Kingfisher Boulevade. In the distance can be seen the cone of Lemington Glassworks and the remaining buildings of the former power station built on the site of Tyne Iron Works. Photo A Curtis (2013).

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'The waggonways and industrial railways of Wylam and Prudhoe'

26/4/2013

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A talk by Robert Forsythe on Monday 22 April 2013.

Robert made reference to several sources in his talk:

A new book by Colin Mountford, 'Rope & Chain Haulage: The Forgotten Element of Railway History. Published by The Industrial Railway Society, 2013.
'A Fighting Trade: Rail Transport in Tyne Coal, 1600-1800' by G Bennett, E Clavering & A Rounding . 2 volumes published by Portcullis 1990.
The website, 'Waggonways in North East England' which has maps showing each waggonway, tramway, mineral railway, railroad, colliery, coal pit, lead mine, fluorspar mine and quarry.

Remains of the Stella Staiths. Photo by David Rogers (2009).

The Runhead Inn, Holborn Lane, Ryton. Photo by Alex McGregor (2010).

The furthest navigable point upriver on the River Tyne was at Stella near Blaydon. There were staiths here where coal was loaded onto flat-bottomed keels for transport down river to colliers. An early wooden waggonway (1600s) approached the staiths from the west along what is now the course of the modern B6317 road via Hedgefield and Crookhill south of old Ryton village. The Runhead Inn marks the top of the incline.

A northern branch of this waggonway served pits just east of Prudhoe and may have crossed the Stanley Burn on the old bridge now in woodland south of the main road.