STEPHENSON'S STUDY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE. CHAP. VI. 



The coals, when brought above ground, had next to 

 be laboriously dragged by means of horses to the 

 shipping staiths on the Tyne, several miles distant. 

 The adoption of a tramroad, it is true, had tended to 

 facilitate their transit : nevertheless the haulage was 

 both tedious and expensive. With the view of econo- 

 mising labour, Stephenson laid down inclined planes 

 where the nature of the ground would admit of this 

 expedient being adopted. Thus, a train of full wag- 

 gons let down the incline by means of a rope running 

 over wheels laid along the tramroad, the other end 

 of which was attached to a train of empty waggons 

 placed at the bottom of the parallel road on the same 

 incline, dragged them up by the simple power of gravity. 

 But this applied only to a comparatively small part of 

 the road. An economical method of working the coal 

 trains, instead of by means of horses the keep of which 

 was at that time very costly in consequence of the high 

 price of corn, was still a great desideratum ; and the 

 best practical minds in the collieries were actively 

 engaged in the attempt to solve the problem. 



In the first place Stephenson resolved to make himself 

 thoroughly acquainted with what had already been done. 

 Mr. Blackett's engines were working daily at Wylam, 

 past the cottage where he had been born ; and thither 

 'he frequently went l to inspect the improvements made 

 by Mr. Blackett from time to time both in the locomotive 

 and in the plate way along which it worked. Jonathan 



1 At the Stephenson Memorial 

 meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 26th 

 October, 1858, Mr. Hugh Taylor, 

 Chairman of the Northern Coal- 

 owners, gave the following account 

 of one of such visits made by Ste- 

 phenson to Wylam, in the company 

 of Mr. Nicholas Wood and himself: 

 " It was, I think, in 1812, that Mr. 

 Stephenson and Mr. Wood came to 

 my house, then at Newburn, and after 

 we had dined, we went and examined 

 the locomotive then on Mr. Blackett's 



waggon-way. At that early date it 

 went by a sort of cog-wheel; there 

 was also something of a chain to it. 

 There was no idea that the machine 

 would be sufficiently adhesive to the 

 rails by the action of its own weight ; 

 but I remember a man going before 

 that was after the chain was abro- 

 gated and scattering ashes on the 

 rails, in order to give it adhesiveness, 

 and two or three miles an hour was 

 about the rate of progress." 



