Locomotion No.1

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:21):
Railway that got the world on track. Hello and welcome to our fifth Tales from
the Rails, our monthly podcast on the Stockton and Darlington Railway,
the railway that got the world on track.
In 2025 we'll be celebrating 200 years since the railway revolution was kicked
off by the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the world was never the same again.

(00:45):
These podcasts explore in some depth the pioneering days of the Stockton and
Darlington Railway and how we're steaming ahead towards 2025.
My name is Caroline Hardy. And my name is Archie Mackay.
I'm an archaeologist and the editor and a trustee for the charity The Friends
of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
I'm also a director of the Stockton and Darlington Railway company that runs

(01:08):
an online gift shop called the Railway Station Shop.
And I'm managing editor of South West Durham News, a small independent publisher
of four community newspapers, including the Shildon and District Town Crier,
produced right here in the cradle of the railways.
So this week on Tales from the Rails, we're talking about Locomotion number

(01:29):
one, the superior travelling engine that was at the heart of the opening day celebrations in 1825.
And to guide us through that, I'm delighted to welcome Dr Michael Bailey,
who is the fount of all knowledge relating to Locomotion No. 1.
He hasn't just carried out extensive archival research into the engine,
but has also carried out an archaeological excavation of it,

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and his findings are fascinating.
Michael's research will also inform our stars of the S&DR feature,
which this month will be about Locomotion No.1's
first driver, James Stephenson, brother of George, also known as Jem or Jemmy.
We'll also be letting you know about all the events that are coming down the

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line and news from last month, so plug in your headphones and enjoy the ride
on the railway that got the world on track.
Tales from the Rails. This podcast is brought to you by the Friends of the Stockton
and Darlington Railway, a registered charity set up to safeguard and promote
the heritage of the railway that got the world on track.

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You can join us by visiting our website at www.sdr1825.org.uk,
So as I was saying, this month we're taking a detailed look at Locomotion No.1,
the locomotive that was used on the opening day of the Stockton and Darlington
Railway on the 27th of September 1825.

(02:54):
Now over 30 years later, by 1857, it was becoming clear to the S&DR pioneers
that the role of the S&DR in bringing railways to the world needed to be recognised formally.
It was decided that Locomotion No.1 should be repaired and restored and
placed on a plinth outside the
station at North Road as a memento of the past, is the way they put it.

(03:15):
This was a significant moment because it was an acknowledgement of the role
of the S&DR as the start of our modern railway network, as the start of a new
kind of railway that would be permanent, publicly available,
locomotive powered and designed to carry anything for a fee.
Edward Pease, much earlier, wrote in his diary that it's the S&DR's completion

(03:36):
in 1825 may be said to have given birth to all others in this world.
By 1857, Edward Pease was 90 years old and increasingly frail.
He was asked to lay the foundation stone by Thomas MacNay, who was tasked with
organising the ceremonies.
Edward Pease turned the invitation down, due to his abundance of years,

(03:58):
was the way he put it, written in a shakily handwritten note.
The laying of the foundation stone on 6 June 1857 was carried out by Edward's
youngest son, Henry, instead and was to be accompanied by celebrations held
for the goods agents and invited guests at the Sun Inn in Darlington.
Guests were also invited to roam the grounds at Pierremont in Darlington where

(04:19):
Henry Pease resided and additional trains were laid on that day for the invited guests to use.
The repair and restoration of Locomotion No.1 was paid for by Joseph Pease,
the third oldest child of Edward and Rachel Pease,
who'd had an active role in the S&DR since at least 1818 when he set out the
prospectus for the new railway company to encourage investors.

(04:40):
But what exactly did this repair and restoration involve?
Was it Locomotion No.1 that was put on the plinth at all?
To discuss this and everything else to do with Locomotion No.
1, we're joined by Dr. Michael Bailey, co-author with Peter Davison of a highly
detailed report commissioned by the National Railway Museum,

(05:02):
which now owns Locomotion No.
1 and indeed the replica of Locomotion No.1 built in 1975.
Hello, Michael, and thank you so much for joining us. Really grateful. them.
So, Michael, what exactly was placed on the plinth in 1857?
I think it would be best described as a hybrid replica of the locomotive,

(05:27):
because following its introduction in 1825,
the locomotive went through at least two major re-buildings and a whole raft
of other minor modifications and alterations.
So by the time it finished its career, it was partly the locomotive that the
railway had opened with, and partly rebuilt components.

(05:49):
As it was, it was left with the rebuilding showing itself quite prominently,
and not looking very much like the 1825 version.
And so when it was returned from its last work to Sheldon Workshops,
it was finally looked at to try and reproduce the locomotive as it appeared in 1825.

(06:11):
So it was rebuilt on the fourth occasion to make it look something along the
lines of how it appeared in 1825.
As for the tender, well, that hadn't survived at all.
The tender that they put on the plinth was a completely new vehicle made to
1857 wagon standards with a box tank on the back, which the original never had.

(06:32):
It had a large barrel on its original tender.
So I think that's the best description, the way of describing it,
is the hybrid replica of the original locomotive.
So did any part of that hybrid replica actually date to 1825?
Not that Peter and I could find. There's nothing on there that we could put
our hands on our hearts and identify as saying, well, that must have been made

(06:55):
right at the outset of its career.
All the components appear to have been replaced at some stage or another.
It's a bit like the Trigger's broom.
It's had five new handles and five new heads. Every part has been replaced at some stage or other.
Absolutely. It's about as much the same as classic cars, isn't it? Indeed.
Yes. So in terms of the hybrid replica, what was the earliest bit of it that you did find?

(07:21):
Well, the earliest part that we could put our hand on our heart and say this
is most likely to have been the earliest part was the boiler barrel.
That was made, we believe, in 1827.
It was originally used on the later Stephenson locomotive.
The name given to it was Diligence, and it used to be number four in the fleet.
That was dismantled quite extensively by Timothy Hackworth in 1834,

(07:46):
and the boiler reused on Locomotion from that year, and it appears to have survived all the way through.
So it's just the barrel of the boiler, not the two end plates.
That's actually quite interesting in its own right, isn't it,
that we have a bit of Diligence surviving?
Well, 1827 is remarkably early, and even though it's not 1825,

(08:07):
the odd two years doesn't make any difference.
And we have learned a great deal about
boiler making in the 1820s from our examination of the boiler barrel.
If we get to the name, we call it Locomotion No.1 nowadays.
The invites to the 1857 ceremony referred to as the old Locomotive Engine No.1.

(08:29):
And we also know it was often called Active.
What was it actually called when it left the factory and when did it acquire
its various other names?
Well, when it left the factory, it was just the Locomotive. There's no need
to have a name or a number or anything like that.
But, of course, as soon as the engine arrived and the crews started to drive
it, the crews inevitably gave it a nickname. And that was Active.

(08:51):
And the name Active stuck with that all the way through its career.
And indeed, for years afterwards, people were still referring to it as the old Active.
As to formal numbering and naming, well, after the gathering of the first few
locomotives, the railway realised it was necessary to identify each one so that
anybody looking at it could identify it by its number.

(09:15):
And that includes, incidentally, members of the public who used to write in
and say, I saw one of your steam locomotives and it was going excessively fast
across a level crossing.
And so the directors of the locomotives...
Stockton and Darlington Railway, introduced in 1827 the requirement that each
locomotive should be given a number.

(09:35):
Incidentally, the number had to be quite prominent, so it was placed on the
chimneys of the locomotive so that anybody looking at it from across a field
or whatever could identify the loco accordingly.
So that did for the first five or six years.
And then by 1833, the putting of other subsequent railways like the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway with locomotive fleets, all of which were named,

(09:58):
it was decided by the directors that they would introduce names to the locos on their railway.
And it was in 1833 that the name Locomotion was introduced.
Now, exactly how that name was displayed, we don't know. It's not written about.
It could either have been painted on the side of the boiler barrel or on the
cladding around the boiler barrel, or it could have had a name plate. We just don't know.

(10:21):
There's one interesting postscript to this part of the story,
And that is all the way back to 1940.
Of all places in Baltimore in the United States, a lady called Dr.
Jessie Johnson walked into the main station in Baltimore.
And she brought with her two old nameplates made of cast iron.
They were in very poor condition.

(10:42):
But she said that they had been passed down to her by her grandfather.
And they had belonged originally to the world's first locomotive used on the
Stockton and Darlington No.
1. Well, Baltimore in 1940, they were not in the least bit interested in railway
history, but they did take the nameplates in and they eventually got passed

(11:04):
to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum.
Now, these nameplates are fascinating. First of all, they're made of cast iron,
but they're badly corroded.
Secondly, a little bit of research confirms that her grandfather,
William Johnson, emigrated from Darlington in 1848.
So there's a kind of logic there that It was possible for him to have removed,

(11:26):
if you like, the loco nameplates from the side of the engine and eventually taken them to America.
But the very large question that arises is if you're going to emigrate from
Darlington to the United States, are you really going to carry two heavy cast
iron nameplates off an old locomotive? It doesn't seem logical.
But there we are. You can go now. You can go to Baltimore, into the museum.

(11:49):
You can see the nameplates, badly corroded as they are, and just possibly that
was the first set of nameplates that were attached to the locomotive.
Fascinating, and I'm thrilled that they're actually still there in Baltimore.
On a slightly related subject, what colour was Locomotion No.1 on the
opening day and perhaps subsequently when maybe she was in duller colours, I don't know?

(12:13):
This is a subject which everybody gets hot under the collar about because everybody
wants to know the colour it was painted.
We know that it was brightly painted. We know that it was gaudily painted even.
But the reports in the press do not tell us what colour that bright paint or gaudy paint was.
So we just don't know. So a lot of thought has been given to this by Peter and myself,

(12:36):
because a replica of the locomotive, a wooden replica of the locomotive,
has now been made and is being displayed in the new Hopetown Museum in Darlington.
And we were asked, well, what colour should we paint it?
So the nearest we could get to the paint scheme is by looking at a drawing allegedly

(12:56):
drawn by George Stephenson and also coloured. Now, it was a scale drawing,
beautifully done, but it was actually colour washed.
And the colour washing was the cladding around the boiler was painted yellow
and the tender vehicle was painted yellow with a blue chimney and blue wheels

(13:16):
and a black boiler ends, the boiler end plate.
So I think that would just about cover brightly painted because yellow is a
bright colour. but we don't have that actual confirmation that that was the
colour in which it was actually turned out.
So between the Stephenson drawing, which was a loco that actually operated on

(13:37):
the Killingworth Railway, and Locomotion No.1, there was a period of three years.
So the nearest we can get to any kind of colour scheme is that drawing,
which is now in the keeping of the National Railway Museum.
That's interesting. I think when I was speaking to Anthony Coulls last Last month,
he mentioned in passing about the colour yellow being associated with speed at that time.

(13:59):
Yes. So that would figure, wouldn't it?
Yeah. Brilliant. Rocket, at the Rainhill Trials, Rocket was painted yellow as well.
And I think this dates back to the old stagecoaches, which, if they were painted
yellow, were the fast coaches.
And there was this association in the minds of the general public that yellow equals speed.

(14:21):
Fascinating. So looking at the design of the engine itself, you mentioned George
Stephenson doing drawings.
So are we still quite happy after your research that, yes, it was made at Robert
Stephenson Co., but it was George Stephenson who designed it? Yes.
Now, design needs to be thought about very carefully, because the way George
Stephenson went about designing,

(14:44):
in inverted commas, the locos that he made, was to achieve success with one
design and then increase its sise as a development program.
In other words, building on success by making it bigger.
Not all was possible, of course, because the locomotives for the Hetton Colliery
Railway, which were made in 1822,
had to be rather smaller than those used on the Killingworth line because the

(15:07):
weight correspondingly increased with the locos on the Killingworth line.
And because the Hetton Colliery line used cast iron rails instead of wrought
iron rails, then he had to design lighter locos.
Now, with the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the track work,
there was a lot of debate about the type of track that could be laid.

(15:28):
And to begin with, orders for cast iron rails were made from various foundries,
including those in South Wales.
But George Stephenson managed to convince the directors partway through the exercise
that, in fact, wrought iron rails would be far superior. period.
And so he had to design the Locomotion as being able to be kept on the whole

(15:51):
of the track, including the cast iron rails.
So it wasn't anything like as large as the locos used on the Killingworth line.
So what he did was, in fact, to specify a locomotive that was one step further
on from those locos used on the Killingworth and Hetton lines.
But sadly, Sadly, because he was so incredibly busy at that time that he couldn't

(16:15):
remain in Newcastle to supervise the construction of the new pair of engines
that had been ordered by the Stockton and Darlington line.
So what he did was he set out on a large sheet of paper drawings of what he
wanted the new locomotive to look like and wrote a whole series of quite detailed
notes about his expectations.
And remarkably, that drawing has survived. Now, it's amazing to have seen any

(16:40):
kind of locomotive drawing in advance of manufacture.
But for this drawing to have survived is quite remarkable, and it can be seen
in the Tyne and Wear record office in Newcastle.
So who was on hand to read his instructions and to turn them into a locomotive?
Well, because of his absence, well, first of all, his son Robert Stephenson was

(17:02):
absent in South America at that time.
And so he inquired after Timothy Hackworth if he could come and assist with the early locomotive.
Timothy Hackworth spent some time at the factory in Newcastle,
but unfortunately, we just don't know how long he spent there. Yeah.
Possibly anything up to six months or so and this

(17:24):
was about 1824 was it that's right
yes exactly and so there needed to
be that continuity and so he hired in another Scottish millwright a chap called
James Kennedy and i suspect that James Kennedy who spent rather more time there
he had most of the the responsibility for turning in Stephenson's instructions

(17:44):
into a new design of locomotive.
So although George Stephenson was nominally in charge of the loco because of
his extended absences, Timothy Hackworth and James Kennedy certainly had a big part to play.
And in addition to bringing the locomotive and presumably the tender down from
Newcastle, there was the huge water barrel on the back.

(18:08):
And we know that was made in Darlington by Mason in Brotherton.
He was in Blackwellgate in Darlington. So we've got another bit.
And so, as you were saying earlier, the hybrid replica doesn't have a wooden
barrel on the back. It's got a water tank.
And just about nearly every image I ever see of Locomotion No.1 has this
water tank, not the barrel. Exactly.

(18:30):
People subsequently believed that what they were looking at on the plinth,
both the loco and the tender, was it.
That's what it actually looked like in 1825 and
of course they were correspondingly misled to
believe that and so subsequently all
the early models of the loco were all as it

(18:51):
looked on the plinth in that year and also the painting by John Dobbins of the
opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway wasn't actually painted until 1875
and what he painted was well he went around the corner to see the loco on its and he copied that.
And so the painting of the opening day reflects the loco as it appeared in 1857.

(19:14):
And it included, of course, the tender with the water tank.
Indeed, and a later version of the Skerne Bridge as well.
So in the days when travel over quite a long distance with a very large object
must have been quite challenging.
How do you get a locomotive from the manufacturing in Newcastle to the railway
at Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825?

(19:36):
A very good question. They called in a contractor to move the heavy object.
This was the company called Pickersgills, who had what today we would call a
low loader. As it was, it was a dray hauled by eight horses.
And so the loco was loaded onto the dray, made secure, and the eight horses

(19:58):
drew the locomotive all the way from Newcastle all the way down to Aycliffe Lane in Heighington.
And the loco, when it got there, it took about two or three days,
they then had the problem of how to get the loco off the dray and onto the railway line.
So when it arrived two or three days later, then so many people turned out to

(20:23):
see the loco going past because in their time, it was a bit like watching the
moon rocket going off, you know, something really new technology.
So a lot of people came to look and several helped to manipulate the loco off
the dray and onto the tracks. Now, all this was undertaken under the supervision
of James Stephenson, or Jem, as he was called.

(20:46):
Now, included in the audience were three lads that said that they could help.
Well, Stephenson ushered them in and said, look, we need to fill the boiler with water.
And near the station at Heighington, or near the location at Heighington, there was a spring.
Now, I've often wondered about this spring and passing from time to time through

(21:08):
Heighington on the way to Shildon, I looked out of the window and there I could
see two low-lying fields with bulrushes growing.
Now, the sight of bulrushes growing is a sure sign that it's very damp, very wet indeed.
So it could be that just a few yards away from where they put the loco onto
the track, that water was available. We don't know exactly where they got the buckets from.

(21:32):
Apparently, it was a nearby farm, but exactly which one, we obviously won't know.
Now, we know that these three lads helped because they were rewarded once the
loco got up steam because they were allowed to have a ride on the footplate or on the tender.
And this must have been a great thrill for them, one that they remembered throughout
their lives, because when one of them died,

(21:55):
he'd emigrated to New Zealand, and it was recorded in the local newspaper in
New Zealand that he had helped fill the loco with water, and he had the reward of a ride on the tender.
So he was one of the first passengers on the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
How thrilling. Do we know their names?
No, I'm sorry. The newspaper report didn't mention the other two lads,

(22:18):
so we don't have their names, but at least we got the name of Crawford Marley.
Brilliant. Thank you. Going back to the water barrel again, the images that
do show Locomotion No.1 with a water barrel, some of them have got it in an upright position.
But I'd always thought, largely based on seeing rocket, that the barrel would
be on its side, so to speak.

(22:40):
Which was it? It was on its side. It's quite incorrect to assume that the barrel
would be upright. right.
We know this because we have one or two illustrations and indeed one or two
photographs of barrels on tenders on the Stockton and Darlington line and they
were all thought the tender and it spread the load more evenly so that made a lot more sense.

(23:03):
So in terms of the other images of Locomotion No.1 that we commonly see, the tender's wrong.
What are the other main inaccuracies in those popular images?
Well, by far the most important discovery,
I'm tempted to say, of the work that Peter Davidson and myself carried out is
that we now believe that on the opening day,

(23:25):
the Locomotion did not have the parallel motion operating the drive of the locomotive
as it is always portrayed and has always been ever since 1857.
The parallel motion was George Stephenson's idea for operating the two cylinders
in tandem rather than individually, because various technical reasons,

(23:47):
if you like, say it was no longer possible for the two axles to be coordinated using a surging chain.
Which had been used on the Killingworth Colliery Line.
The surging chain made sure that the two axles worked in tandem.
Now, this was no longer possible on Locomotion, and therefore they had to find
an alternative way of the two motions with the two cylinders operating in tandem.

(24:10):
And so because he had been in such a busy period of work, from February to June of 1825,
he was down in Westminster attending Parliament with regard to the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway scheme that had to be parted through Parliament.
And so he just wasn't around at the time when all of the decisions,

(24:33):
the final detailed decisions, had to be taken.
And so when he got back in June, the directors of the Stockton and Darlington
Railway were beside themselves with worry because the railway itself had been
finished and they had no motive power to be able to commence the operations.
And so they got on at him to finish the locomotive as quickly as possible.

(24:53):
And he took the pragmatic decision that it was no longer sensible to go for
the parallel motion. And so he went, fell back.
On the system that had been employed for years on the Killingworth Colliery and
the Hetton Colliery lines of using the slide bars to guide the crossheads to

(25:15):
maintain the correct heading of the motion as it proceeded along the track.
And so that was the biggest change of all from the images that Dobbin put on, for example.
But what we have got are one or two sketches. In fact, I think three that I
used in the report, none of them, none of those three sketches show the parallel motion being present.

(25:39):
But they do seem to show that the slide bars are there prominently in exactly
the same way as they had been at Killingworth.
So that was the main change that one could discern from those sketches.
Sketches yes I've seen some sketches which
have chains on the side and one of them was

(25:59):
used in a 1975 commemorative plate
so I'd always assumed that was wrong so
I can still be quite correct in thinking it's still
wrong right so when it
came to the opening day did the locomotive perform well
well yeah this is fascinating because locomotives were
still very new machines and subject to an awful lot

(26:22):
of things that could go wrong particularly with their interraction with
the loco itself and the track but on the
opening day the loco performed perfectly it was a remarkable success and a great
omen for the future of railways okay it had one minor little hiccup when the
a piece of oakum was caught up in the boiler feed pump but that was soon sorted

(26:47):
out and and apart from that,
it performed extremely well with really quite a heavy load.
70 to 80 tonnes of load with several hundred people on board.
And for this entirely new system of transport, for this to happen was just absolutely remarkable.
Straight out of the box and it worked. Brilliant. And what about after the opening day?

(27:09):
Well, after the opening day, okay, one or two things started to provide a few
problems. The wheels were one of the main problems.
What Stephenson asked to be put on was larger diameter wheels than those that
had previously been employed on the Killingworth and Hetton locos.
He went for a four-foot diameter driving wheel rather than a three-foot diameter driving wheel.

(27:32):
But these were made of cast iron, and cast iron is a notoriously brittle material.
So there were a number of problems which Timothy Hackworth had to deal with,
and it was not easy for him.
The wheels had to be replaced very early on in the November of 1825.
So yes, they did have some problems.

(27:52):
Later on, they started experiencing problems with not only Locomotion,
but also the other early locos from the Stephenson company.
If I can move on now to the second loco, which was delivered just a few weeks
later, then this one appears to have had the parallel motion now fitted.
But once again, George Stephenson was not present to supervise to make sure that

(28:16):
the parallel motion worked well. He was off again supervising for a number of
other long-distance railway systems.
And so it was left to James Kennedy to oversee the preparation of the second loco.
And it did not work, in sharp contrast to Locomotion, which worked beautifully.
It didn't work because they had problems with the geometry of the parallel motion

(28:40):
and also the valve gear to drive the valves. So the Stockton and Darlington
directors were very, very upset.
And there are two minutes taken of their thoughts about the difficulty that
they experienced in the minute books, which tell us a lot about how cross they were.
So the Stephenson company had to send fitters down from Newcastle to the Stockton

(29:05):
and Darlington to try and make the loco work.
And it took a number of days, if not weeks, before they finally got it sorted.
Sorted and it's interesting that Locomotion was actually driven by James Stephenson
Jem who had a lot of experience as a driver on the Killingworth line who understood
the loco and could understand what best to do to maintain it in a way that would

(29:29):
minimise the component weaknesses that.
Prevailed he was he was driving No.1 he wasn't driving the set number two.
And it was number two that was the one that was causing the problem.
So as I say, eventually, the locos started to work satisfactorily.
And three more locos were then delivered to make up a fleet of five.

(29:50):
Well, the five locos started to suffer problems from 1827 onwards.
And the problem was the weakness of the fitting of the flue inside the boiler.
And loco number two, the second one, which seemed to be the black sheep of the
family, it exploded at Stockton so badly that, in fact, it had to be removed from the fleet.

(30:11):
So that was the first disaster, which Stephenson was obviously very concerned about.
The second thing that happened was that in the spring of 1828.
Number 5 also suffered an explosion that was so bad that it badly injured and
subsequently led to the death of one of the footplate crew.
And to cap it all, in the July, the 1st of July in 1828, Locomotion itself had

(30:35):
an implosion which affected the flue and it was badly damaged.
It then had to be withdrawn from service and was taken back to Shildon and laid
aside for a few weeks, if not months.
So I guess there were all sorts of problems that had to be dealt with during
the early years of the railway.
It must have been a remarkably trying time for

(30:56):
everybody and that Number Two locomotive I
understand its nickname was Hope and so
it got off pretty lightly being called Hope when you think of
what a disaster it was. Well and actually the
name Hope wasn't provided until 1833 and
therefore it wasn't the the one
that we were just discussing. It was the next loco,

(31:19):
Number Three that became Number Two and they
started numbering you see in 1827 after the explosion to
to the to the original Number Two and so
they just all shunted up one and Hope was the third locomotive that
had been delivered. Ah, interesting. How terribly confusing sort of to balance
all the disasters and what sort of journey frequencies and weight of haulage

(31:42):
was Locomotion No.1 doing in those first few years? Well actually doing
remarkably well it doesn't sound like it from the the description I've just made,
but in fact, it was making a daily journey from the bottom of the bank just
near Shildon all the way through to Stockton or sometimes to Yarm.
And that was a daily journey.

(32:04):
When I say daily, that's six days of the week. And three additional journeys to just Darlington.
Now, these journeys started for the land sale of coal.
The line was predominantly land sale of coal. It was Darlington,
Stockton, Yarm, and a whole series of the intermediate points along the line.
It wasn't until the January of 1826 that the stathes at Stockton,

(32:31):
where the coal was tipped into the vessels for shipment down the coast of the country,
that it actually began operations.
And so this worked out to something like 45 tons per journey,
something in the region of about 20 wagons or so.
And this accumulated to about 20,000 to 25,000 ton miles per month in those earliest years.

(32:55):
Now, we know this because the drivers were paid in accordance with the ton miles that they achieved.
And so all the calculations of their monthly pay were all carefully written
down in the pay sheets of the Stockton and Darlington Railway,
which remarkably survive in the National Archives in Kew.

(33:18):
And when I ordered that particular piece
this gigantic parcel arrived inside which
were monthly sheets of all of the
payments well not all nearly all of the payments to the drivers for each of
the locomotives it was a remarkable resource and from that we can learn an awful
lot about what number one was achieving in terms of tonne miles and just to

(33:43):
clarify you mentioned, some of the journeys were to the yarn branches and the
Darlington branches but presumably Presumably,
Locomotion No.1 didn't actually go down the branch line,
but at that point the wagons would be transferred to horse on the branches?
Well, no, I think they actually went down the branches. Right.
Because the pay sheets say exactly how far the locomotive worked with its load

(34:06):
because the tonne miles were determined on that calculation.
That's interesting. I'm going to have to go and rewrite something I was writing this week.
This is you're just constantly learning more and
more all the time about the Stockton and Darlington Railway it could
be hard to keep up and you mentioned the
explosion in July 1828 at Heighington when John Cree the driver was killed and

(34:31):
Edward Turnbull who was helping put water into the boiler I think at that point
was badly injured who had who
put Active or Locomotion No.1 back together at that point and how?
Well, it's worth just making the observation that the reason why these explosions
were happening was partly put down to the fact that the safety valve on the

(34:56):
locos was being tied down with a piece of rope whilst the loco was underway.
This is because the vibration of the loco on the track meant that unless you
tied it down, the safety valve was jumping up and down and releasing an awful lot of steam.
Which would make the journey much more expensive and so

(35:18):
what they did was to tie it down during the journey which
was fine and quite safe but when you stopped to
fill up with water for example then it would be necessary to
untie the safety valve so that it lifted when the maximum pressure occurred
in the boiler now it seems that they all three cases were triggered by this

(35:41):
failure to release the safety valve during these stops.
The directors were appalled at these occurrences, not only because of the danger
to the drivers and the other people involved,
but also, of course, it meant that if the loco was out of action for a long
time, it would reduce the ability to keep up the sort of flow of coal that was

(36:06):
required by their operation.
Now, poor John Cree was another driver who came across from the Killingworth Colliery line.
He sadly died on that occasion, and it was left to Timothy Hackworth to pick up the pieces.
Hackworth, as I say, made arrangements for it to go back down to Shildon.

(36:28):
And this coincided with Hackworth's endeavours to increase the steaming capability of locomotives.
Now, listeners will recall that he developed the locomotive,
the Royal George, which was quite a very successful locomotive indeed.

(36:48):
And the reason, partly, was because it had so much more heating surface than
the original Stephenson locomotives.
So he wanted to squeeze this lemon a bit more in his consideration of what to do with Locomotion.
So what he did was to say, right, because the Royal George had a return flue boiler.

(37:11):
Now, by return flue, we mean that the flue goes all the way through from the
back end to the front end.
And then does a 180 degree turn
and comes all the way back again to the rear of the
boiler where you had the the chimney at
that point so he said well perhaps we can go and have two return flues and so

(37:33):
he sketched out in his mind the idea of having this twin return flue boiler. He
had no idea if it was going to be feasible and so he travelled up to Newcastle
to the Robert Stephenson Company works,
to discuss with their boiler makers the possibility of a boiler with two return flues.

(37:54):
Now, this was very difficult to fit in because in a boiler of four feet diameter,
there wasn't actually enough room to fit two return flues in.
But what they did say is that if we increase the diameter of the boiler to four
feet, six inches, doesn't sound very much of an increase, but that was an important increase.

(38:16):
It did allow for two return flues to be fitted inside the boiler.
And that's what the boiler makers at Newcastle succeeded in doing.
And so we have the record in the Stephenson and Company records of the work that
was carried out for this boiler. And indeed, they made a duplicate of the return
flue just in case the worst happened on the first one.

(38:39):
And so Hackworth left them to manufacture this new boiler with the two return flues.
And this was then sent to Shildon and Hackworth fitted it to what remained of Locomotion.
And this was something very novel indeed. Indeed, it looked very strange because
if you have two return flues, then you have two chimneys at the back.

(39:03):
So this is a very strange looking loco going with nothing at the front and two chimneys at the back.
Now, if you need to draw the fire through both those chimneys,
then it would be necessary to have two exhaust pipes that serve the two chimneys.
Is and so this meant that two new cylinders had
to be made with castings with exits to

(39:26):
feed to the two exhaust pipes so this meant that the locomotive had not only
a new boiler but two new cylinders as well and two new exhaust pipes now subsequently
it only had one chimney again but the two exhaust Exhaust pipes survived on
the loco, and to this very day,
the loco still sports two exhaust pipes.

(39:49):
And no one has thought to ask the question, why has he got two exhaust pipes? He didn't need them.
And it dates back all those years to 1828, and the subsequent rebuilding was in 1834.
So they were only needed from those six years, and from then on,
one was surplus to requirements. but you'd need to cast new cylinders again

(40:11):
and that was too expensive.
So there we are, it's one of those remarkable features of the loco which you
can look at as you see it in the museum and say, oh, that's why it's got two exhaust pipes.
I'm going to look out for those next time I'm in there having a look.
And I just, I mean, that to me was just one of the mind-blowing things about
your report is visualising Locomotion No.1 with two chimneys from the

(40:34):
back instead of the picture that we all have in our heads. and of course this
is one of the big rebuilds that means...
A lot of what was put on that plinth in 1857 wasn't from 1825.
If you say. Yeah. So thinking about our listeners more towards the Middlesbrough
area, who are always interested in anything that happened there, Locomotion No.1

(40:55):
had a role in the building and running of that wobbly suspension bridge built
by the S&DR to cross the Tees and join the 1825 main line to the new Middlesbrough branch in 1830.
Can you talk a little bit about how Locomotion No.1 helped in that process?
Well, I'm not convinced that it did. Right. The reason for that is,

(41:15):
just going back to the last thing we were discussing,
is that the new boiler with the two chimneys and so on was made the locomotive
considerably heavier than it had been in its first form and much more heavy
than the other locos in the fleet.
And so because of the wobbly bridge, they opted to use it very tentatively just

(41:36):
to see how much it could take in terms of weights of trains going over it.
They tried one locomotive with 28 empty wagons spread across the bridge all in one go.
And the deflection was an alarming six inches.
So this was so alarming that Thomas Storey, the civil engineer of the Stockton

(41:57):
and Darlington Railway, What he said is, no, we cannot afford to risk.
locomotives going over and so what the railway decided
to do was to have a siding adjacent to
the bridge part with the trains of coal wagons
there and horses would take the wagon one or two wagons over the bridge at a
time and then on to Middlesbrough on the other side now this carried on until

(42:22):
1834 which is actually quite a long time because it was it started to be used
in 1830 but from 1834,
Storey himself was able to strengthen the bridge in a way that we still don't understand fully.
He used his words in his reports about the bridge that make it very difficult
to understand exactly what he'd done.

(42:43):
But he gained confidence that from that moment on that it would be possible
for locomotives to be able to take trains of coal wagons across the bridge and on to Middlesbrough.
This meant that the locos were limited in how heavy they were to operate those
trains to Middlesbrough.
So Timothy Hackworth had the task of reducing the weight of the locomotives.

(43:07):
And he started rebuilding, first of all, Loco Number Four.
That was the Diligence. He virtually rebuilt it. It was virtually a new engine
just to lighten the load and make a number of other improvements.
And it so happened then that when he looked at number one, he then said,
that's too heavy, so we'll have to rebuild it a second time.
And what he did then was to take this boiler off the Diligence and put it on

(43:31):
to the Locomotion itself.
And this boiler had a single return flue, which was considerably lighter than
the double return flue that had just been taken off. And that meant that it
was light enough to be able to work the Middlesbrough coal trains.
And so from 1834 onwards, the locomotive was able to take trains from Sheldon

(43:52):
all the way through to Middlesbrough.
And that is again reflected in the pay sheets of the drivers from that time.
So, all said and done, how long was Locomotion No.1 actually hauling freight?
I mean, she never carried passengers, but mostly coal, limestone,
stone, that sort of thing.
How long was she hauling? Well, she was exclusively used for coal movement right

(44:17):
the way through until the July of 1839.
It was only then that she was withdrawn, almost certainly because the subsequent
locos in the fleet were more than enough to cope with the increase of traffic on the line.
And she was then, to use the modern railway term, the cascaded down to lesser

(44:37):
duties, maintenance trains and
merchandise trains, such as limestone and timber and that sort of thing.
So that carried on from July of 1839 through to the following year, 1840.
Now, we are told by the history books that the Locomotion came out of service
in 1841. I could see no specific reference to it going that far.

(45:02):
All the references that I could find ended in 1840.
But in a sense, it doesn't matter. It's either 1840 or 1841 before it was laid
aside again at Shildon, outside the workshops there.
So we start seeing a shift towards the locomotive being a celebrity museum

(45:24):
artefact, if you like, with the
opening of the Middlesbrough and Redcar Railway on the 4th of June 1846?
No, I think that it's a slight misunderstanding here because what happened in the early part of 1846,
I managed to find a reference in the merchandise department's minute book that

(45:45):
said that they were short of motive power in 1846 and would it be possible to
have further motive power made available.
And the coal traffic was such that they were so busy that there was no spare
motive power available.
And so somebody made the suggestion, well, what about number one?
There it was sitting there. Surely that could be put it back into steam.

(46:06):
And so it actually started work on the merchandise trains in the early part of 1846.
Now, this happened to coincide with the opening of the Middlesbrough and Redcar
Railway in the June of 1846.
And then you get these wonderful extracts of the opening day when the locomotive

(46:26):
was seen passing down the line with one of the trains all the way through to Redcar.
It was a merchandise train. It wasn't a passenger train.
And yet Nathaniel Plews of Darlington, one of the directors of the Great North
of England Railway, said he was so pleased to have been drawn to Redcar behind No.1.

(46:47):
And they were here, here and cheers. Cheers. Well.
I think he either got a lift on the footplate just because he wanted to as a
rowing enthusiast, or he built on the truth, shall we say. How else can I put it?
Because, in fact, it was a merchandise train. There's certainly quite a lot of that.
But I suppose with the opening day celebrations, things are not as normal,

(47:10):
are they? They may have used it.
It has this association of being the first engine.
Oh, yes. It was well recognised. And then in 1851, we've got Robert Stephenson
asking about the possibility of having Locomotion No.1
at the Great Exhibition in London. Yes, I'm puzzled about this.

(47:32):
He certainly thought about using Locomotion to exhibit it at the Great Exhibition,
the same as he had for Rocket as well.
The fact of the matter is that the take-up of space at the Great Exhibition
was lagging rather quite a bit behind the expectations.
And so Robert Stephenson, as a commissioner for the Great Exhibition,

(47:52):
suggested that perhaps by putting the old locos on display alongside some of
the new locomotives, the visitors could make comparison between the old and the new.
And so that might have been passed on to the directors of the railway.
We don't know. There's no evidence of that.
But as you rightly say, the beginnings now

(48:14):
of some sentimental understanding of the importance of Locomotion having survived
because the success of the railway network nationally and indeed internationally
meant that people were experiencing a tremendous change in lifestyle.
Lifestyle and the sort of beginnings, the growth, if you like,

(48:34):
of the industrial revolution.
And so, therefore, that sense of history started to creep in and they started
to think in terms of maybe we should be recognising this in some way.
They didn't know how or why.
There was even one reference to setting up a museum. Now, a museum in the 1850s was something unusual.

(48:55):
The obvious comparison was the Patent Office Museum down in London.
And perhaps the directors were starting to think in those terms.
But exactly what you do in a museum or how to display it, they wouldn't really have known.
At the same time, incidentally, there were one or two occasions where Locomotion
was considered for disposal as a secondhand locomotive for use as an alternative

(49:18):
form of motive power by other users, perhaps another colliery or something.
And the railway had already disposed of a number of locomotives,
including the Royal George, incidentally.
And so one is slightly surprised that they hadn't disposed of it by the 1850s.
And so, yes, one certainly gets the view that there was a sentimental attachment to the locomotive.

(49:41):
And despite that sentimental attachment, her last use really before going on
the plane seems to have been a stationary engine at Pease's West Colliery.
Yes, yes. And this was Joseph Pease was in charge of the colliery.
The actual colliery was Roddymoor Colliery in the little town of Crook to the
northwest of Bishop Auckland.
It was said to have been used as a pumping engine for the colliery.

(50:04):
I think it might be more correct to say that it was used as a stationary boiler
supplying steam for a pump to pump water at the colliery.
And that would explain it because it meant that there were no drastic changes
or extra bits to manufacture to turn it into that purpose.
And I think that it's used as a stationary boiler to feed a pump would be the

(50:25):
more correct interpretation.
And presumably even more changes to its fabric as well as part of that process.
Yes, it wouldn't be too many. I think it was done on the cheap, to be honest.
So when the decision's made to place Locomotion No.1 on a plinth at North
Road Station, I mean, what did engineer William Bouch do?

(50:47):
Did he go scrabbling about the works yard looking for the bits that were missing
in Shildon, discarded bits and pieces, cobble something together that does the job?
Well, yes and no. No. Let's think of what Locomotion looked like when it came
back from Roddymoor Colliery.
It came back to Sheldon Workshop, and he was given this task of representing

(51:07):
it to be, in a way, suitable for putting up on the plinth.
This was in 1856 when it came back.
He had a loco that had a return flue boiler with a chimney at the same end as the fire grate.
So that looked odd. So that wouldn't be allowed. out
so what he did was he partly rebuilt the

(51:28):
loco and partly manufactured missing components so
he removed the two end plates from the
barrel removed the return flue he manufactured
a new single return flue just
from the rear to the to the leading end cobbled together
a chimney which is partly parts of other
previous chimneys and partly new plates so it's

(51:49):
a bit of a jigsaw puzzle the the chimney which survives today
of course and that the valve motion the driving motion
and the wheels were on there anyway we can't
date the wheels precisely but they may have been
there during its final years as a locomotive anyway but
if not otherwise yes he cobbled together the bits to make it look as near as

(52:10):
made sense within a budget incidentally of 50 pounds only to rebuild it so
he had quite a challenge on his hands so let's face it he wasn't able to turn
turned the loco back into how it looked in 1825,
but he made a pretty good job of it.
And the loco as we now see it is the result of all the work that he did.
And it was then well accepted when it was placed on the plinth in 1857.

(52:34):
So she's on the plinth. It's 1857. It's not the end of the story, though, is it?
She's actually, over the next
years, probably going to travel further than she ever travelled before.
Can you just give us a flavour of where in the world Locomotion No.1 ended
up at various times? It went everywhere.

(52:55):
First of all, in 1875, it was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the
railway it was the Jubilee year and it
was decided to put on a two-day exhibition in the
North Road workshops in in darlington so the
loco was lifted off its plinth and moved the
few yards through to the workshops and was

(53:16):
set up in there supported by timbers so that the loco wheels were just shy of
the track so this enabled the loco to be steamed and the motion to revolve and
the wheels to revolve without going anywhere because of that gap between the wheels and the track.
This was obviously very popular because there is a splendid drawing of it that

(53:40):
was published at the time.
And to do that, they had to provide steam from the workshop's own boiler,
fed through a steam line through to the valve chests on the top of the boiler.
So there was no question of steaming the loco itself using its own boiler.
So to do that, it was necessary to replace the valve chest covers to accommodate

(54:04):
a flange from the steam line so that the steam could then be passed into the
steam chest to allow the motion to work.
And that apparently worked quite successfully.
But to this day, you look at it
now and those steam valve chest covers are those that were put on in 1875.
1875 so when you as an archaeologist

(54:26):
looking at an old machine like this you have to consider not
only all the alterations that were made up until
it was withdrawn from service but the alterations that were made after it had
been withdrawn from service and to accommodate all the various requirements
of all these visits so after 1875 it went on on a number of visits the He went

(54:48):
to Chicago to the National Exposition of Railway Appliances in 1883.
He went to Liverpool. He went to Newcastle. He went to Edinburgh.
And in 1886, he went to Paris to appear in the Exposition Retrospective du Travail of 1886.
Which was the year that the Eiffel Tower was built. By the time we got to 1890.

(55:13):
It had come back from Edinburgh to be replaced once again on the plinth outside
North Road Station in Darlington.
But at that time, the mayor and burgesses of the town of Darlington,
which by then was very proud of Locomotion and the Stockton and Darlington Railway
and so on, in fact, Locomotion appeared on the seal of the Darlington town.

(55:36):
I don't know if it still does, incidentally. I'd be interested to know that.
But they wrote a formal plea to the North Eastern Railway that then,
of course, was the owner of the locomotive, appealing for the loco to be brought
inside for display under cover,
because all these years since 1857 all
the way through to 1890 it meant that the loco was

(55:59):
subject to all the winds and weathers that could be
thrown at it and the fabric of the loco was deteriorating badly the underside
of the boiler for example and water had collected at the underside and had started
to rot through the fabric and there is evidence of that that we saw when we
looked underneath the boiler barrel.

(56:19):
There are patching to overcome some of the worst examples.
So that appeal was heard by the North Eastern Railway and they said,
right, what we will do, we will move it undercover inside Bank Top Station.
And those of us of a certain age will remember that loco being displayed in
Bank Top Station even now, all these years later.

(56:40):
So it was moved there in 1892.
And stayed there until the wartime when it was removed, as the Second World
War, I should say, when it was removed for safekeeping and brought back again
and stayed there until 1975.
Now, it's worth saying that there were two occasions when it was absent from the bank top plinth.

(57:01):
Firstly, in 1924, when she went off again on her travels, this time down to
Wembley for the Empire Exhibition,
and she was exhibited alongside Flying Scotsman of all locos,
and she was exhibited with the wheels and motion rotating, this time not by
steam, but by an electric motor, a little donkey motor, turning the wheels in

(57:24):
motion for the enjoyment of the visitors.
1925 was much more ambitious. That, of course, was the centenary year of the
Stockton and Darlington Railway.
And she was prepared for exhibition at this centenary.
Now, the centenary was formed in two parts. One was the big exhibition in Darlington itself,

(57:46):
and the other was a very large display of locos, moving locos,
along the track from Stockton all the way through to Darlington.
And all the VIPs were placed in a large seating area made of scaffolding by the hooks of things.
And a lot of VIPs attended, including the Duke and Duchess of York,

(58:07):
later the King and Queen, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
And so they watched it go past, and the Locomotion was to lead,
sorry, was to follow the last exhibit in this parade.
The parade itself went extremely well. There were 53 exhibits.

(58:27):
One of the exhibits dropped out, and so it was the 53rd, carrying the number
54, that went past the Duke and Duchess. The way it worked was that they couldn't
provide steam, of course, because the boiler was in such a bad state.
And so what they did was to get a petrol engine from a car and fit it into the tender.

(58:48):
In fact, they made a second replica tender.
So you had a replica of a replica and placed the engine in the tender.
And this managed to provide enough traction to move not only the loco but also
a train of carriages as they reproduced the opening day train from 100 years before.
So from 1975 till 2021 she was at the Railway Museum in Darlington which was

(59:13):
at North Road Railway Station but which was renovated in 1975 as part of the
150th celebrations of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
2021, she moved to Locomotion in Shildon.
And subsequent to that, that's when you were commissioned to carry out the archival
research and excavation along with Peter Davison, which has resulted in all

(59:34):
this amazing information.
Given that there's actually virtually nothing left of the 1825 Locomotion No.1
in the piece that's there today in that museum, what do you think the real
significance is of that museum piece of Locomotion that we have today?
Well, I think its very existence and provenance, going back to that opening

(59:57):
day, helps to focus attention on the pioneering efforts of Stephenson and Hackworth.
The Stockton and Darlington Railway began its life as being a very profitable business,
and this made the whole development of the railway network so much accelerated
as a result, because there were good profits to be made by anybody investing in new railway systems.

(01:00:21):
And so, therefore, the loco is a key element in the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed. So, Michael, don't go away because we're going to get our money's worth out of you.
But you can find Michael's report, co-written with Peter Davidson, on the Friends website.
Just click on the tab at the top for the online library and scroll down.

(01:00:46):
And if you'd like to introduce the children to Locomotion No.1,
let me take this opportunity to introduce you, dear listeners,
to Little Loco, a delightfully illustrated picture book all about the opening
of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
With its heart Little Loco who is of course Locomotion No.1 along with
her friends Harold the Horse,
the Wonky Wagons George the Genius and Talented Timothy. You can buy that book

(01:01:10):
for a mere £8.99 from the Friends website and all good bookshops and here at
South West Durham News in Shildon. And in the interest of transparency I should
say that I am the author of that book.
Music.
Stars of the S&DR,
right so our Star of the S&DR this

(01:01:33):
month is James or Jem or Jemmy Stephenson, also referred to as Old Jem when he
got older. He was born in 1779 and died in 1847 and again as part of Michael's
research into Locomotion No.1,
he also did some research into its engine drivers.

(01:01:54):
So, Michael, who was Jem or James Stephenson?
Well, he was the oldest of six children who were brought up in Wylam.
The second child was George Stephenson, who was to become so very well known
in railway development.
He became an engine driver, working for his brother on the Killingworth Colliery line.

(01:02:17):
He became a very experienced driver and a very competent one because he was
able to maintain the locos in a satisfactory way to keep the whole of the colliery system working.
When the Stockton and Darlington Railway first required a driver,
he was the obvious person for his brother to call upon to come and,

(01:02:38):
first of all, drive the train on the opening day and, indeed,
to carry on as the driver of Locomotion for a number of months afterwards.
And later he moved to some
of the later locomotives that were introduced because he
was able to get to understand the locos and how to
work them get the best out of them as as he proceeded so he was not the only

(01:03:03):
driver to come from the Killingworth Colliery line because they obviously needed
more than one one driver to start the new system going but he certainly was
as I say the most experienced. Other people were people like William Goland,
who was the fireman on the number one from his very earliest years.
And Goland himself became a very competent driver and one that took part in

(01:03:27):
a number of very successful train operations in later years.
I'm always amazed you mentioned Wylam, because, you know, we've got all these
people who came from Wylam. It's actually quite a small village.
Timothy Hackworth came from there as well.
For that small place to generate all these Stockton and Darlington Railway key
players is just amazing.

(01:03:48):
If James Stephenson was the first engine driver for Locomotion No.1,
apart from the opening day, of course, do you think?
Even on the opening day, he was on the footplate. Was he?
Yes. He and his brother were both on board. Right, okay.
Do you think Jem is the person who actually Christened number one Active?

(01:04:08):
Because presumably the engine drivers, they get to know their engines pretty
well and start to give them nicknames.
I think it's very likely that he was the one who gave the name,
yes, certainly. That's interesting.
We've got no evidence, but it's nice to think that. Yes, so let's do it anyway.
So engine men had quite a reputation for being well paid, was that true?

(01:04:30):
Yes, actually, they were quite well paid.
We have the records in the National Archives of exactly what he was paid at the very beginning.
He was paid three shillings and eight pence per day, which was remarkable.
So many people had nothing like that sort of income.
And so he was he was it was worth every penny because he got the system working

(01:04:53):
very well and very reliably and coped with some of the problems that we were
discussing earlier. earlier to keep the loco working.
A very skilled job. Did he have to pay various expenses out of that money?
Right well when we got past the early years
and sorry the early months I should say then he had to abide by a new system

(01:05:14):
he and the other fellow drivers whereby the company was anxious not to be seen
to be overpaying the drivers because it reduced their profitability And so,
so successful was the railway,
they decided to pay by result.
This began in 1827, and all the calculations that were undertaken at that time

(01:05:35):
by the directors, they decided to pay the drivers a farthing per tonne mile.
Mile so that took account of not only
the wage of the driver but also the wage of
the fireman and the actual expenses of
operation in other words the coal that was consumed lubricating oil
and from 1827 the cost of the fire

(01:05:57):
bars as well because replacement fire bars were getting
quite expensive and so all that had to be met from
the money that he received but nevertheless they were
still received quite a decent wage every day and some of the drivers later said
that they were better paid than anyone else and they always had plenty of money
so yes they they it was that they were paid they were high value and and did

(01:06:21):
they generally stick to the one engine as their engine.
They did, for the most part, because they were paid in accordance with the tonne
miles that they achieved each month.
And therefore, the locos were initially known by the name of the driver rather
than any number, which was, as we've discussed already, was introduced from 1827 onwards.

(01:06:43):
So the trains were operating with wagons for different locations along the track,
dropping off some of the wagons at intermediate stations before going all the
way through to the end of the line at Stockton.
So all these calculations were listed in the pay sheets.
So you knew how many tons were taken to Yarm, how many were taken to Stockton,

(01:07:07):
how many tons were taken to Darlington. And you've got the mileages.
I've got a list here of all the mileages that they used in calculating the monthly pay sheets.
Right. So who's the boss? Do they report to Timothy Hackworth?
Yes, they did. Yes, Timothy Hackworth was the boss, although this changed in

(01:07:28):
1833-34. To start with, Timothy Hackworth was the superintendent for the company from 1833-84 onwards.
He became a contractor to the railway company, he and two other engineers.
Timothy Hackworth was by far the most prominent of the three because he took
over the Shildon workshops and the other two engineers had their own premises in Darlington.

(01:07:54):
So, yes, that was the report to Timothy Hackworth on both systems until 1840,
when that system was dropped by the Stockton and Darlington Railway,
and they set up a new company,
the Shildon Works Company, that Timothy Hackworth had no further involvement with the company.

(01:08:15):
And, of course, he went on to hire things with his own workshop in the town. on.
It's worth saying, by the way, I mentioned earlier that the men were paid in
accordance with the calculations each month.
The men had to sign for the money that they received each month.
So there was no argument about, oh, I haven't been paid this month or whatever.

(01:08:36):
Now, Stephenson, James Stephenson signed with a cross.
In other words, he couldn't write his own name.
I found this very sobering to see
where he signed with the cross to receive the money
because his brother his younger brother started life in exactly the same way
not being able to read nor write and yet he taught himself to read and write

(01:08:57):
as well as developing this sense of engineering sensibilities that made him
stand out amongst so many other people and it's not until you see the
cross that James Stephenson put, receiving the money, suddenly brings it down to you, down to earth.
That too was the beginnings of George Stephenson.
Well, I can't help feeling sorry for Jemmy having George Stephenson as your big brother.

(01:09:23):
But it gives you an insight, doesn't it, into the personalities of the engine drivers.
And they do seem to come through quite a bit in a lot of the archives.
I get the impression in those early days that some of the engine drivers were getting into trouble.
Drink seems to feature quite a lot, but you've already mentioned fastening down

(01:09:43):
the safety valves when you shouldn't have.
There are also instances of them sometimes refusing to drive,
sometimes speeding, sometimes being a bit half-hearted.
Let's say, does Jemmy come across as being an especially colourful engine driver?
Robert Young, in his book on Timothy Hackworth and the locomotive,
says that Jemmy was famous for using rich and lurid vocabulary.

(01:10:06):
I think that all of the drivers used rich and lurid vocabulary.
I don't think there was anything that made Jem Stephenson stand out from the
others, not in all the archives that I've looked at.
Yes, he occasionally was mentioned in dispatches, as it were,
but the most common breaking of the rules, shall we say, was speeding.

(01:10:32):
Speeding the directors were very cross with
a number of the drivers over many years for the
speed with which the they drove the trains when
you think that they started off at sort of five or six miles an hour
and gradually crept up to 10 or 12 miles an
hour that was plenty fast enough the track was not that good in fact it was
the track that was the most most concern to the directors because of the maintenance

(01:10:57):
of the track, so in in spite of all they did, the drivers were
constantly speeding and they were fined heavily if they were found out.
Again, this comes back to the number that was placed on the chimney of each
locomotive so that the time and place and driver could be identified.
Which, of course, they still do on lorries and things, don't you?

(01:11:18):
Is this vehicle being driven responsibly? If not, report.
Actually, there's another story about Jem. Actually, when he gets bored and
just for a change of scene, he gets off the engine and walks alongside it at times.
And this is partly him assessing how well it's running. If he's walking slowly, it's going a bit slow.

(01:11:38):
If he's having to sprint to keep up with it, then it's running well.
So that's one of the stories that's been passed down by him,
which suggests he wasn't speeding all the time, maybe quite a lot of the time.
Well, it was actually a requirement for the driver and fireman to drop down
onto the track whilst the train was in motion because they had to lubricate

(01:11:58):
all of the wagons and that took some doing to lubricate on a moving train.
Okay, the train was only creeping forwards very slowly.
But nevertheless, as you lubricated the wagons, then the train started to go
faster because of the benefit of the lubrication.
So by the time you got to the end of the train, it was starting to move much faster.

(01:12:20):
And so there are stories, which horrify me, of clambering up onto the last wagon,
progressing up the train on the coals.
Ah, James Bond style. Yes, that's right.
And then you finish up back on the tender. So these are the stories that I think
most of the crews were required to do that.

(01:12:42):
In fact, another of the fines that were issued was of the crews not lubricating
the wagons and the consequent friction causing all sorts of damage to the wheel
sets and the bearings on the wagons themselves.
And so, yes, this was a serious problem, which was often resolved by all of
the drivers being walking along the train, by the side of the train along the track.

(01:13:06):
It's such a hazardous job, isn't it? I can't see Network Rail buying this at all nowadays.
I don't think so. There was another lovely story that I really liked about Jemmy.
When he gets into big trouble, he's responsible for delivering the empties to
make sure they get back to Etherley Collieries at the west side of the line.
They belong to Colonel Stobart and they don't get there, and so Colonel Stobart's

(01:13:32):
agent has a jolly good go at Jemmy and this crops up in conversation with Hackworth.
He's reporting back to the boss and says, that gentleman was very sarky with me the day.
And Hackworth, mister reasonable and kind and polite, says, well, had you done your best?
And Jemmy goes, and apologies, I can't do accents.
I can't do any accents. But Jemmy goes, well, no, we hadn't done our best.

(01:13:55):
We were all in a rag aboot it. (I have no idea what that means.)
And Hackworth says, well, you should have apologised.
And Jemmy goes, Mr Hackworth, I apologised and apologised, but the mair I apologised, the worse he was.
And you can just sort of imagine Jemmy when we're hearing that.
There are also incidents of him being referred to as Old Jem, chasing Rocket No.7,

(01:14:18):
which has a tendency just to take off on its own and was labelled The Maniac as a result.
So it does seem to be a very exciting life. Do we know anything about James
Stephenson's personal life? Was he married?
Yes, he was. His wife, Jane, and he had three daughters.
But very sadly, his wife died in 1829, and the birth of his third daughter was 1829.

(01:14:48):
So it would seem that she may very well have died in childbirth.
But this is one of the risks that they had to deal with in those years.
So he had the responsibility of two small girls and a baby from 1829.
And so very little is written up about him in the various papers of the Stockton
and Darlington Railway after that time.

(01:15:10):
So exactly how much time he had off, we just don't know. There's just no record of it.
But it could be that his domestic circumstances were such that he was unable
to play as big a part as hitherto in the operations of the railway.
And do we know where he was living? I mean, I presume it was around Shildon, somewhere.
Yeah, almost certainly around Shildon. We know when he started,

(01:15:33):
when he first went there in 1825, he was allowed a lodging allowance of three
shillings per month for accommodation because he'd obviously moved down from Killingworth.
But exactly where, of course, is not recorded. There was no need to record that.
And when did he actually finally stop working for the Stockton and Darlington Railway?
He stopped in February of 1831. There is a comment in the director's minutes

(01:15:57):
to say that his services were no longer required.
Now, exactly what was going on, again, because of his domestic circumstances,
we just don't know, and no explanation is provided.
But very sadly, what had started as being such an important part of the origins
of the Stockton and Darlington Railway suddenly ended abruptly in February 1831.

(01:16:21):
It would seem that he appealed to his brother, to George Stephenson,
look, I've got a problem.
I've lost my job. And can you help out?
And he went down to the Leicester and Swannington Railway at that time,
which was just beginning its operation.
George and Robert Stephenson then were responsible for the first years of operation.

(01:16:43):
So it would seem that they put in a good word for him. He moved down there.
And eventually, when he died in 1847, he died in Coalville, which is on the alignment
of the Leicester and Swannington Railway.
So one perhaps could assume that he carried on as being one of the drivers on
that railway until he died in that year.

(01:17:05):
He died on the 9th of August, 1847, and he's buried in Coalville Churchyard.
And is the gravestone still there?
I don't know. I've tried to find out, but I've not been able to.
Short of visiting Coalville, I've not been able to check on that.
Well, if there's anyone listening from Coalville, go and have a look.
Michael, thank you so much for that amazingly in-depth insight into not just Locomotion No.1

(01:17:31):
but to Jemmy Stephenson, who just sounds like such a wonderful,
skilled, talented, but colourful character.
Thank you so much for your time.
Reminding everybody that you can get a copy of Michael and Peter's report on the Friends website.
Michael, thank you. Could I just add one more thing, Caroline?

(01:17:53):
Yes, of course. Yeah, right. Just to say that the National Railway Museum has
determined to publish our report because what you see online is our report without
the drawings or without most of the large drawings.
And so it loses an awful lot of meaning
and content to the viewer but when the

(01:18:15):
publication comes out the large drawings will
be included and the readers will be able to obtain a much more comprehensive
understanding of the history of the locomotive. Brilliant yeah we want pictures.
Well that's definitely worth buying. Do you know when that's coming out?
Well, I don't. I understand that it's going to be later this year.

(01:18:36):
Right okay well that's brilliant. Thank you very much again, Michael.
Tales from the Rails. Steaming ahead to 2025.
So what's this month's news? This podcast comes out on the 27th of June,
so the news relates to that.
Yeah, there's a reminder that Hopetown in Darlington will be open on Tuesday the 16th of July.

(01:19:00):
You can find out more about following Hopetown on their Facebook page and sign
up for their newsletter on their website.
Just put "Hopetown Darlington" into your usual search engine.
Also a reminder that the S&DR Festival programme running next year from
29th March until November 2025 will be launched this September the 19th.

(01:19:26):
And the next edition of The Globe comes out in July.
The Globe is the journal of The Friends of the S&DR and has a mixture of
academic and newsy items.
You'll get a copy if you are already a member but back copies can also be bought
from the Friends website or downloaded for free.

(01:19:47):
Personally I would recommend buying the back copies because obviously if you
can afford to do that then all of the money will go back into the Friends.
The Friends of the Stockton and Darlington Railway have got area groups so you
can also join one of the area groups that's close to where you live.
Those area groups have been out and about looking after the 1825 route by litter
picking, cutting back vegetation and grass cutting, making sure it looks lovely

(01:20:10):
for people who come to see it.
The Darlington group have been kept particularly busy litter picking around
Skerne Bridge, but also carrying out repairs to the Haughton Road coal depot
wall and the resetting of stone sleepers along Tornado Way.
The Heighington group cleared the depot yard of broken glass last month.
It's a great way to get involved with the Stockton and Darlington Railway and

(01:20:32):
so if you're able it all helps get the Stockton and Darlington ready for visitors in 2025 and beyond.
A meeting of the Middleton St George Stockton and Darlington Bicentenary Organisation Group
was held on Thursday 9th May.
People in this group are working on an exhibition for 2025 which includes railway

(01:20:56):
songs, railway themed floral displays and bunting for the village and nationally
renowned speakers to give a talk.
Perhaps their ambition might inspire further celebratory events elsewhere along the line.
By the time you listen to this, the Friends of the S&DR should have submitted
their major grant application to the Community Ownership Fund to help them acquire

(01:21:17):
the world's first railway station at Heighington.
If successful, we'll hear by early September.
If you haven't signed the petition to support this project or made a donation,
please do so now. Just go to our webpage and all will be clear.
That's www.sdr1825.org.uk The cycle track is now going on at Phoenix Road near the Etherley Incline.

(01:21:41):
This runs roughly parallel to the S&DR walking route, but tends to take slightly
wider routes as the original 1825 surface is not always wide enough to be shared
or robust enough to cope with cycle traffic.
Behind the scenes discussions have also been taking place between the Friends
and Darlington Borough Council on the merchandising station site on North Road,

(01:22:04):
on Dobbin's View, also on North Road, the Lime Cells and Edward Pease's house.
They're all clustered around the Stockton and Darlington Railway area in Darlington.
I do hope that we'll have something positive and exciting to report back on
very soon. That sounds interesting.
The 138th Durham Miners' Gala is on the 13th July in Durham, of course.

(01:22:29):
It's a great place to see Durham Miners' banners and railway union banners,
amongst many others, and more than 50 brass bands, and I'm looking forward to being there.
The Railway Institute in Shildon are having a Shildon Works 40 reunion and exhibition
on Sunday the 30th of June in their main hall.
Images, relics and memories galore are promised.

(01:22:50):
A great deal for old comrades and their families and anyone else interested.
And plans are now underway for a creative writing competition inspired by the railways.
Details will be launched later this year and the results announced and published
in various locations throughout 2025.
As part of this, I'll be co-running a workshop with Anne Cuthbert on

(01:23:11):
Women of the Railways, at Locomotion.
So watch this space if you're feeling creative, and this is one of the projects
funded by the S&DR Community Grant Scheme.
Music.
That's it for another month. We hope you've enjoyed delving into the inner workings
of Locomotion No.1 and getting to know its first regular driver, Jem Stephenson.

(01:23:35):
Thank you so much to Dr Michael Bailey for generously sharing his knowledge.
There's much more in his report. Remember, you can look at it in the Friends
online library on our website.
And as he said, there's a book coming out soon.
And remember, you can help prepare for 2025 by joining the Friends of the S&DR
at their website, www.sdr1825.org.uk.

(01:24:02):
You will also find links here to our Save Heighington Station campaign.
And here's a reminder of some other useful contacts:
Kate Barrett is the S&DR Heritage and Community Participation Manager.
She's got an S&DR Community Fund, which can provide grants of a few hundred
to a few thousand pounds and which are available over the next four years

(01:24:25):
to help people celebrate and conserve the S&DR. If you've got an idea,
then get in touch with Kate and she'll be able to provide initial feedback on it.
And if it fits the community grant objectives, encourage you to submit an application.
And the team of various officers in the local authorities, including Nicky Halifax,
the 2025 Festival Director, can all be contacted through one single email address,

(01:24:46):
which is info@sdr200.co.uk.
And you can use that email address for any general inquiries.
And if you should need help getting your S&DR facts right for your event or
your business advertising, just contact the Friends of the S&DR via their webpage.
We'll put a link to that in the show notes and the link, of course,

(01:25:10):
to anything else that we've mentioned in this particular show.
And a big thank you, as always, to Dave Reynolds of the Railway Institute in Shildon
for our theme music.
My name is Caroline Hardie. I'm Archie MacKay,
and choo-choo for the noo! Oh, we can't say that!
Music.

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