Evolution of the Railway 197 



The collieries that were more especially required to meet 

 this increased demand were those in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of the Tyne, since they offered the advantages of 

 thick seams of coal of excellent quality and close alike to the 

 surface and to a navigable river. The proportions to which 

 the industry had already attained in the year 1649 are shown 

 by Grey, in his " Chorographia, or a Survey of Newcastle- 

 upon -Tine," where he says: "Many thousand people are 

 imployed in this trade of coales : many live by working of 

 them in pits : many live by conveying them in waggons 

 and waines to the river Tine. . . . One coal merchant im- 

 ployeth five hundred or a thousand in his works of coal." 



The one great difficulty in the way of development lay in 

 the trouble experienced in getting the coal from the pit- 

 banks to the river for loading into the keels, or barges, by 

 which it would be conveyed to the sea-going colliers lying 

 J^elow the bridge at Newcastle. 



The established custom was to send the coal to the river 

 by carts, or wains, or even in panniers slung across the backs 

 of horses ; and in Robert Edington's " Treatise on the Coal 

 Trade " (1813) mention is made of various collieries which 

 had up to 600 or 700 carts engaged in this service. Inasmuch, 

 however, as the art of road-making in general was then still 

 in its elementary stage, one can well imagine that, with all 

 this traffic along them, the roads between the collieries and 

 the Tyne must have been in a condition that added greatly 

 both to the difficulties and to the cost of transport. Nicholas 

 Wood, in his "Practical Treatise on Rail-roads" (1825), 

 gives an extract, dated 1602, from the book of a Newcastle 

 coal company, showing that " from tyme out of mynd " 

 the coal carts had brought eight bolls equal to about 17 

 cwt. of coal to the river ; but added that " of late several 

 hath brought only, or scarce, seven," a fact sufficiently 

 suggestive of the deplorable state to which the colliery roads 

 had been reduced even at the opening of a century that was 

 to bring about so great an increase in the demand for coal. 



Bad as the position was for the collieries located near 

 to the Tyne, it was worse for those situate at any distance 

 from the river, since, under the road conditions then pre- 

 vailing, it was practically impossible for the owners of,, the 

 latter collieries to get their coal to the river at all, or to secure 



