tyne+&+wear

Tyne ⇒ Les régions nprm le Tyne and Wear Tyne and Wear.

Wear ⇒ Les régions nprm ⇒ Tyne.

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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The Wylam wagonway passed Newburn, and Hedley, who went to school at Wylam, must have been familiar with this wagonway from childhood. It had been built c.1748 to carry coal from Wylam Colliery to the navigable limit of the Tyne at Lemington. In 1805 Hedley was appointed viewer, or manager, of Wylam Colliery by Christopher Blackett, who had inherited the colliery and wagonway in 1800. Unlike most Tyneside wagonways, the gradient of the Wylam line was insufficient for loaded wagons to run down by gravity and they had to be hauled by horses. Blackett had a locomotive, of the type designed by Richard Trevithick, built at Gateshead as early as 1804 but did not take delivery, probably because his wooden track was not strong enough. In 1808 Blackett and Hedley relaid the wagonway with plate rails of the type promoted by Benjamin Outram, and in 1812, following successful introduction of locomotives at Middleton by John Blenkinsop, Blackett asked Hedley to investigate the feasibility of locomotives at Wylam. The expense of re-laying with rack rails was unwelcome, and Hedley experimented to find out the relationship between the weight of a locomotive and the load it could move relying on its adhesion weight alone. He used first a model test carriage, which survives at the Science Museum, London, and then used a full-sized test carriage laden with weights in varying quantities and propelled by men turning handles. Having apparently satisfied himself on this point, he had a locomotive incorporating the frames and wheels of the test carriage built. The work was done at Wylam by Thomas Waters, who was familiar with the 1804 locomotive, Timothy Hackworth, foreman smith, and Jonathan Forster, enginewright. This locomotive, with cast-iron boiler and single cylinder, was unsatisfactory: Hackworth and Forster then built another locomotive to Hedley's design, with a wrought-iron return-tube boiler, two vertical external cylinders and drive via overhead beams through pinions to the two axles. This locomotive probably came into use in the spring of 1814: it performed well and further examples of the type were built. Their axle loading, however, was too great for the track and from about 1815 each locomotive was mounted on two four-wheeled bogies, the bogie having recently been invented by William Chapman. Hedley eventually left Wylam in 1827 to devote himself to other colliery interests. He supported the construction of the Clarence Railway, opened in 1833, and sent his coal over it in trains hauled by his own locomotives. Two of his Wylam locomotives survive— Puffing Billy at the Science Museum, London, and Wylam Dilly at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh—though how much of these is original and how much dates from the period 1827–32, when the Wylam line was re-laid with edge rails and the locomotives reverted to four wheels (with flanges), is a matter of mild controversy.

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See also: Stephenson, George

SUBJECT AREA: Land transport, Mining and extraction technology, Railways and locomotives

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After being educated at Sheffield Grammar School, Thompson and his elder brother established Aberdare Iron Works, South Wales, where he gained experience in mine engineering from the coal-and ironstone-mines with which the works were connected. In 1811 he moved to the North of England as Managing Partner in Bewicke's Main Colliery, County Durham, which was replaced in 1814 by a new colliery at nearby Ouston. Coal from this was carried to the Tyne over the Pelew Main Wagonway, which included a 1,992 yd (1,821 m) section where horses had to haul loaded wagons between the top of one cable-worked incline and the foot of the next. Both inclines were worked by stationary steam engines, and by installing a rope with a record length of nearly 1 1/2 miles (2.4 km), in 1821 Thompson arranged for the engine of the upper incline to haul the loaded wagons along the intervening section also. To their rear was attached the rope from the engine of the lower incline, to be used in due course to haul the empties back again.

He subsequently installed this system of "reciprocal working" elsewhere, in particular in 1826 over five miles (8 km) of the Brunton \& Shields Railroad, a colliery line north of the Tyne, where trains were hauled at an average speed of 6 mph (10 km/h) including rope changes. This performance was better than that of contemporary locomotives. The directors of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway, which was then being built, considered installing reciprocal cable haulage on their line, and then decided to stage a competition to establish whether an improved steam locomotive could do better still. This competition became the Rainhill Trials of 1829 and was decisively won by Rocket, which had been built for the purpose.

Thompson meanwhile had become prominent in the promotion of the Newcastle \& Carlisle Railway, which, when it received its Act in 1829, was the longest railway so far authorized in Britain.

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See also: Rastrick, John Urpeth; Stephenson, Robert

Geography: Tyne and Wear (Англия, Великобритания)