Shields, On the River Tyne

The Tate's JMW Turner's paintings are on country-wide tour, with "The Fighting Temeraire" recently on display at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.   In support of this, JMW Turner's "Shields, on the River Tyne" is featured at TWAM's South Shields Museum.   The painting is interesting in showing coal handling & its transition from shovelling from keels to using waggons with bottom doors on drops (lowering waggons out over the hold) or spouts (chutes to aim coal around the hold).

Shields, on the River Tyne
This painting from the mid 1820s belongs to & is fully described by the Tate 

The Last Ships

A blog post at the end of 2021 featured photos by Chris Killip, in particular the exhibition The Last Ships at the Laing Art Gallery.   I'd recommend visiting this free exhibition of photos of the final tankers being built at Swan Hunter, showing Tyneside heavy industry & its workers 50 years ago.

Propellor being fitted to the Everett F Wells c1976 at Swans.
with Hawthorn Leslie on the far bank 

Lemington Gut

Compound map of waggonways leading to staiths at Lemington
(map courtesy of Les Turnbull)

Note that this map predates TIC improvements to navigability of the Tyne, which included piers at Shields, removal of sandbars & islands, straightening of the lower reaches, ongoing dredging, & notably for Lemington a cut which removed the meander past its staiths & industry, which were left on a spur or gut   At the same time, Armstrong's swing bridge replaced the low Georgian Bridge at Newcastle.   These improvements together enabled sea going ships to travel nearly as far as Wylam regardless of most tides, although large ships had more limited access to the upper reaches.

So what happened to waggonways, staiths & industry at Lemington?   Read on ......

Scotswood Walk

Walking Tour of Scotswood station site - 1pm Wed 30 Oct 2024
from St Margaret's Church on Heighley Street NE15 6AR

Scotswood is an area of the west end of Newcastle where the population grew rapidly with industrial expansion, notably Armstrong's factory on the riverside at Elswick.   This coincided with railway development. including the first cross country main line between Newcastle & Carlisle.

The Tyne was the main thoroughfare, with heavy industry along its banks, for which workers' housing packed the steep valley sides.   Railways in the area evolved to meet demand within these constraints, leading to condensed, impressive & expensive civil engineering, including the remarkable layout around Scotswood.

William Thomas

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?

Hopetown

The renewed Darlington railway museum uses currently
in vogue electronic presentations & interactive video

The Tanfield Railway (1984)

Top: Cochrane with 1 & 2 at the unfinished Sunniside station
Bottom: 21 & Cochrane are runners in a dilapidated MH shed

In 1984 Les Turnbull of the Education Dept of Gateshead MBC produced a couple of interesting & historically accurate 36 page A5 booklets, one about railways of Gateshead & the other focussing on the Tanfield Railway.   Each had a short production run, so there are now very few available. 

The Railways of Gateshead

Top: A1 60147 North Eastern at Gateshead Greenesfield shed
Bottom: Cochrane at MH station with MH colliery behind

In 1984 Les Turnbull of the Education Dept of Gateshead MBC produced a couple of interesting & historically accurate 36 page A5 booklets, one about railways of Gateshead & the other focussing on the Tanfield Railway.   Each had a short production run, so there are now very few available.   We received a copy of The Railways of Gateshead among several donated books (which are available for sale in Andrews House Station bookshop on train running days).

Railway History from Causey

A cast iron rail chair found & brought back from Causey yesterday

News from 75 Years Ago

A newspaper cutting found in a first edition of Wright's "The North Sunderland Railway".
Tanfield Railway models itself on such as the NSR and colliery railways of NE England.

Reyrolle's No.2

In Hebburn library, browsing through the book "Arcs, Sparks & Engineers - A Centenary History of A.Reyrolle & Co.Ltd (1901- 2001)", I came across the photo below:

TR's Armstrong Whitworth D22 of 1933 in original guise as Reyrolle No.2
seen in 1937 outside Hebburn short-circuit testing station No.2

One of the next photos in the book shows an explosion as new switch gear is tested to short-circuit destruction!   

Like Andrew Leslie's shipyard (which started in the mid19th century), Reyrolle's complex was a major  industrial employer in Hebburn.   Reyrolle rode the turn of the century surge on Tyneside in electrical design, development, production, use & export.   Business was good, enabling the company to invest in employee development, help to improve housing, & set up welfare facilities such as large sports fields & parks.

RY Pickering & its Locos

Robert Young Pickering (1849-1931) was born in Shildon.   His father moved the family with teenager Robert to Wishaw in North Lanarkshire, where they went into rolling stock manufacture.   RY Pickering was established around 1880 to continue & expand the business, which produced thousands of carriages & waggons for home & abroad before being wound up as Norbrit-Pickering in the 1980s.

TR carriage No.3, seen here behind Horden, is an RY Pickering product

Thursday with GPVs

Dennis making fire irons

Springwell Bank Foot Shed Today

Springwell Bank Foot locomotive shed was built in 1829 as part of the iron railway by George Stephenson from Jarrow to Springwell Colliery.   This colliery (now the base of the preserved Bowes Railway) was at the top of a mile long balanced incline, with descending full waggons hauling empties back to the colliery.   Locos from the shed hauled coal from Springwell Bank Foot to staiths at Jarrow on the Tyne.   The shed & route became part of the Pontop & Jarrow Railway in 1854, with the westward extension through Marley Hill - note similarities to our shed.   Marley Hill shed is the oldest in the world still in steam loco use, whereas Springwell Bank Foot Shed is no longer rail connected, and surrounded by housing development.

Looking north east towards Jarrow; on the right is the 1829 shed,
on the left is the 1960s extension for diesel locos.
(photo courtesy of Alex Tyson)

New Waggonway Book

Les Turnbull makes the point that waggonways precede the Stockton & Darlington by over 200 years, & that the development of waggonways for collieries in NE England is the true beginning of the railway revolution.   He also states that the S&DR is celebrated due to successful high profile NER marketing, continued by the LNER & BR, & now the Friends of the S&DR.   

To hear about Les' book & championing of waggonways, there is a launch at 6pm this Thursday at the Mining Institute, repeated at 1pm on Wednesday 31 January at the Lit & Phil.   These are free events bookable via Eventbrite.   

The S&D 2025 bicentennial has top level support, promotion & events which should bring many visitors to NE England.

For 2025 it's up to us at Tanfield to connect & celebrate 300 years of the Sunniside to Causey section of our railway.

Wednesday

Martin. Ian & Ian discussing the bonfire

Joicey Collieries around Tanfield

The following is a short extract from a facsimile of A History of Coal, Coke, Coalfields znd Iron Manufacture in Northern England by William Fordyce, published in 1860.   At the time, the NER was newly established, the Tanfield Branch was an iron railway without locomotives, colliers worked 12-18 hours a day (unionisation was in its infancy), wooden brigs predominated - but could not pass beyond the Georgian bridge at Newcastle, & the TIC had barely started to improve navigability of the Tyne.   The book may have been written for the general knowledge & interest of educated Victorians who would have understood the importance of coal & iron to the NE economy.

A coal mill used to pump water from mines, similar to that at Bobgins
(I believe drawn by TH Hair about 1830)

Selling Steam Sentinels to Steelworks

In 1950 Ken Judkins, who had had a working life pre WWII with steam road traction, began a late career as a demonstrator for Thomas Hill of Rotherham.   Thos. Hill was an agent for Sentinels of Shrewsbury and all were concerned in selling steam over diesel.    Ken made an impact in this role, selling new steam locomotives to industrial concerns around Britain.   He later became associated with Chasewater Railway and wrote a couple of books, a story from "My Life in Steam" (Oakwood Press, 1970) being reproduced below.

Ken Judkins at Chasewater Railway
(Courtesy Chasewater News 1994)

RSH Husky at AV Dawson

AV Dawson Ltd are transport specialists who operate the Port of Middlesbrough 

An Evening Delivery

Arriving at East Tanfield this evening .....
(photo courtesy of Alex Tyson)