200 years of the pioneering Hetton steam railway in Durham

It is, of course, the Hetton Railway, the first railway in the world to be designed to be worked by steam locomotives rather than old-fashioned horses.

Last weekend, a two-day conference was held to discuss its place in railway history, to hear the premiere of a stirring piece of silver band music written in its honour and to help launch the Stephenson Trail which follows its eight mile course from Hetton up and over a large hill called Warden Law and then down to the staithes on the Wear in Sunderland.

The railway was inspired by a bust-up. In 1819, the Marquess of Londonderry sacked Arthur Mowbray as the viewer – or manager – of his east Durham collieries, so Mowbray formed the Hetton Coal Company, County Durham’s first major public company, with a view to proving his old boss wrong.

Unlike in the west of the county, the coal seam in the east is hidden from the surface by a dense layer of magnesian limestone which was hard, neigh impossible, to drill through. Trying to sink through to the seam had bankrupted Robert Lyon, the landowner at Hetton, so Mowbray bought him out and tried again.

Some geologists said it was a fool’s errand but Mowbray persevered and after nearly two years of trying, on September 3, 1822, at a depth of 109 fathoms (more than 650ft) he hit the Main seam.

Hetton Colliery in about 1822

He was so confident that he would win coal that he had already instructed George Stephenson (above) to design a private railway that would take Hetton’s black gold to the sea.

Stephenson was then working for Lord Ravensworth, building and maintaining the steam engines that worked the collieries around Killingworth, to the north of Newcastle.

The Hetton Railway was a major project for Stephenson and it had one major obstacle on it: Warden Law, which rose 636ft above sea level.

So Stephenson ran a 1½ mile railway from the colliery to the foot of the hill which was to be operated by locomotives. Then he built “inclined planes” up the side of the hill – each plane had a stationery steam engine built at its top which used a rope to pull the waggons up Warden Law and then, with the help of gravity, they were lowered down the other side to Silksworth, from where locos on another 2½ mile railway would pull them to the staithes on the river (which were just about opposite where the Stadium of Light is today).

Construction began in March 1821, and the following month Stephenson was poached by Edward Pease to become the resident engineer of the planned 26-mile Stockton & Darlington Railway, so his brother, Robert, took up residence in Sunderland to oversee the Hetton’s construction.

Hetton Colliery with an early Stephenson engine in front of it

Locos for it were made at Killingworth for a gauge of 4ft 8ins – Britain’s standard gauge railway is today 4ft 8½ins because of this.

The line opened on November 18, 1822, and was not, initially, a roaring success in operational terms.

The stationery engines up Warden Law were soon found to be inadequate, and the 2½ mile railway through Sunderland had such sharp curves that the locos could only run at 2mph. They were removed and replaced by more stationery engines, which could pull the waggons at 10mph.

And the cliffs at the river’s edge were so steep that the coal was catapulted 14ft into the holds of the waiting ships at such speeds that it broke up and his value was diminished. The railway tried lots of reconfigurations to reach the waterside at a lower level, including in 1906 a quarter-of-a-mile tunnel built by Irish navvies under Durham Road. The navvies started at either end but didn’t quite meet in the middle, so the tunnel had a sharp dog’s leg.

For all that, the railway was a roaring success in promoting economic development. In the coalfield, Elemore and Eppleton collieries were opened and used the line to export their produce, and in Sunderland, industries located alongside the line so they had a ready supply of fuel.

The Bishopwearmouth Ironworks opened beside it in 1827 but perhaps more significant was the Wear Glass Works which opened beside it in 1836 – by 1856, it was producing a third of Britain’s plate glass.

The new banner unveiled at the Hetton Railway conference last weekend. Picture courtesy of Lonely Tower Film and Media which has produced a lovely nine-minute video of the premiere last weekend of Marty Longstaff's piece of music dedicated to the railway. Search "Lonely Tower" on YouTube

There were other unexpected developments. For instance, in the late 19th Century, Sunderland council struck a deal with the railway to dispose of the “nightsoil” that was naturally produced by the inhabitants. For every five waggons full of coal that were dropped at the staithes at the end of the railway, three waggons of “nightsoil” (insert your own euphemism here) were taken away back up the line to be dumped in an old quarry.

The line was drastically altered over time, but it operated until 1959 when the National Coal Board created the Hawthorn Combined Mine at Murton which drew all the coal from the surviving pits at Eppleton and Elemore.

The last 2½ miles of railway through Sunderland survived as a coal depot until June 30, 1972.

The Hetton Railway was a vital part of Stephenson’s steep learning curve as he grew to become “the father of the railways”.

It left behind one of the railway’s great curiosities: the Hetton Lyon (above). In 1902, it was hailed as “the oldest working locomotive in the world”, and it became a tourist attraction. It was so revered that in 1925 it headed the Stockton & Darlington Railway’s century of steam cavalcade (below, picture courtesy of the JW Armstrong Trust).

However, in recent years in-depth analysis of the Hetton Lyon, which is now in Shildon’s Locomotion museum, has shown that it was really made in about 1849 to Stephenson’s early designs. It is still an interesting mid-19th Century Durham engine, but it doesn’t quite take us back to those earliest days of the Hetton Railway 200 years ago.

The Hetton Lyon at Shildon's Locomotion museum