The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. IX.] STEPHENSON'S FIRST LOCOMOTIVES. 87
CHAPTER IX.
GEORGE Stephenson's first locomotives.
While Mr. Blackett was thus experimenting and building
locomotives at Wylam, George Stephenson was anxiously brood-
ing over the same subject at Killingworth. He was no sooner
appointed engine-wright of the collieries than his attention was
directed to the more economical haulage of the coal from the
pits to the river side. We have seen that one of the first im-
portant improvements which he made, after being placed in
charge of the colliery machinery, was to apply the surplus power
of a pumping steam-engine, fixed underground, for the purpose
of drawing the coals out of the deeper workings of the Killing-
worth mineSj^by which he succeeded in efiecting a large reduc-
tion in the expenditure on manual and horse labour.
The coals, when brought above ground, had next to be labo-
riously dragged by means of horses to the shipping staiths on the
Tyne, several miles distant. The adoption of a tram-road, it is
true, had tended to facilitate their transit ; nevertheless the haul-
age was both tedious and expensive. With the view of econo-
mizing labour, inclined planes were laid down by Mr. Stephenson,
where the nature of the ground would admit of this expedient
being adopted. Thus, a train of full wagons let down the incline
by means of a rope running over wheels laid along the tram-road,
the other end of which was attached to a train of empty wagons
placed at the bottom of the parallel road on the same incline,
dragged them up by the simple power of gravity—an exceed-
ingly economical mode of working the trafiic. But this applied
only to a comparatively small portion of the entire length of
road. An economical method of working the coal trains, instead
of by means of horses,—the keep of which was at the time very