Evolution of the Railway 199 



into operation somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth 

 century if not still earlier. Taking 1650 as an approximate 

 date, this would mean that the first rail-way must have been 

 made about one hundred and eighty years before the opening 

 of that Liverpool and Manchester line with which the history 

 of railways is often assumed to have begun. 



Hutchinson speaks of the collieries on the Tyne as being, 

 at the time he wrote (1778), " about twenty-four in number," 

 and he further says of them that they " lie at considerable 

 distances from the river." On account of these considerable 

 distances the colliery managers had to secure way-leaves for 

 their rail- ways from the owners of intervening land, so as to 

 obtain access to the Tyne. Thus Roger North, in the account 

 he gives of the railways in the Newcastle district, says : 

 " When men have pieces of land between the collieries and 

 the rivers, they sell leave to lead coals over their ground, 

 and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect 

 2O/. per annum for this leave." In some instances the total 

 payment for a way-leave seems to have amounted to 500 

 a year. Statutory powers were not required for the rail-ways 

 so long as they were used only for private purposes, though 

 when they crossed a public road the assent of the local authori- 

 ties was necessary. 



The rails, sleepers and wheels, all of wood, came mostly 

 from Sussex or Hampshire, and the writer of an article on 

 the Tyne railways, published in the " Commercial and Agri- 

 cultural Magazine " for October, 1800, speaks of the use on 

 them of so much timber as " the more extraordinary " because 

 the necessities of the coal mines had previously " used up 

 every stick of timber in the neighbourhood," so that " the 

 import from returning colliers (coal-ships) was the sole 

 resource." Such import, also, would appear to have been 

 considerable, the making of wooden rail-ways on the north- 

 east coast being the means of developing an important in- 

 dustry in rails and wheels in the southern counties. 



One of the importers on the Tyne was William Scott, father 

 of Lords Stowell and Eldon, and his " Letters," included in 

 M. A. Richardson's " Reprints of Rare Tracts " (Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, 1849), give some interesting details on the sub- 

 ject. Scott, in addition to being himself engaged in mining, 

 acted as agent for southern producers of wooden rails and 



