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| William Thomas, from the only known portrait (artwork courtesy of Yasmin Turnbull) |
This post follows today's talk by Les Turnbull at the Lit & Phil.
William Thomas (17xx - 1824) was the steward of Elizabeth Montague's northern estates & the viewer of her East Denton Colliery. He was consulting engineer at Blackett's Wylam Colliery and a founding member of both the Lit & Phil and the Society of Antiquaries.
As a visionary, William was notable for his views on railways, which in his time were usually single purpose non-passenger unidirectional pit to port waggonways. His ideas for the development of railways became evident in 1800 when he gave a talk at the Lit & Phil espousing a steam double track inter city railway between Newcastle & Carlisle, not only for bulk materials such as coal, but also to carry general goods & passengers. I wonder how many of his contemporaries thought similarly in NE England, a quarter century before the S&DR?
