226 History of Inland Transport 



son, on being appointed engineer to the line, persuaded the 

 company to adopt iron rails in preference to wooden ones, and 

 to provide a locomotive such as he had already constructed 

 and successfully employed at Killingworth Colliery. Two- 

 thirds of the rails laid were of malleable iron and one-third 

 of cast iron. It was not, however, until September, 1824, 

 that the order was actually given for a locomotive, some 

 of the promoters having still shown a strong preference for 

 the use of stationary engines and ropes. 



The line was opened for traffic on September 27, 1825, and 

 the locomotive which had been ordered the " Locomotion " 

 as it was called was ready for the occasion. It weighed 

 seven tons, and had perpendicular cylinders and a boiler 

 provided with only a single flue, or tube, 10 inches in diameter 

 and 10 feet in length, the heat being abstracted therefrom 

 so imperfectly that when the locomotive was working the 

 chimney soon became red-hot. 1 The usual speed was from 

 four to six miles an hour, with a highest possible of eight 

 miles an hour on the level. 



The company made provision for the anticipated goods 

 traffic by having 150 waggons built ; but they started with 

 no idea of themselves undertaking passenger traffic. Their 

 first Act had laid down that " Any person is at liberty to use 

 and run a carriage on the railway, provided he complies with 

 the bye-laws of the company " ; and J. S. Jeans, in his 

 history of the Stockton and Darlington Railway published 

 (1875) under the title of " Jubilee Memorial of the Railway 

 System," says : "It was originally intended to allow the 

 proprietors of stage-coaches or other conveyances plying on 

 the route of the proposed new railway to make use of the 

 line on certain specified conditions." This, too, is what 

 actually happened ; for although, a fortnight after the opening 

 of the line, the railway company themselves put on the line 

 a springless " coach," known as the " Experiment," and 

 drawn by a horse, several coach proprietors in the district 

 availed themselves of their statutory right to run their own 

 coaches on the railway, first, of course, providing them with 

 wheels adapted to the rails. They paid the railway company 



1 In succeeding engines a double tube, bent in the form of the letter 

 U, was fixed. Stephenson provided his "Rocket" with 25 tubes, thus 

 giving a further substantial increase in the heating surface, 



