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| A cast iron rail chair found & brought back from Causey yesterday |
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| The chair has a recess in the base with the remains of a wooden pad |
The chair follows the Summerson patented design, in which a wooden base pad was a means of cushioning the bottom of double-headed rail, preventing galling. Double-headed rail was intended to be inverted once the head was worn, to present a new head and extending rail life, but the idea fell out of favour in the later 19th century. Such chairs were used in the early days in NE England on the S&DR and NER. This particular chair could date from 1839-1881, after the 3'10" gauge Tanfield wooden waggonway was converted to a standard gauge rope-hauled iron railway in the centre of the Brandling Junction Railway (extending from beyond Tanfield Moor to South Shields & Monkwearmouth Dock).
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