Riverscape - A Railway Heritage
‘Newcastle Roads’ was the name given to early 18th Century railways which acknowledged that rapid development of the worlds rail roads grew out of the pioneering work on Tyneside. But these were not the first industrial tracks because mining wagons were running on wooden rails in Germany and Romania in the 15th Century. It is said that the idea came to England when German miners working in the Lake District built simple lines in about 1570 well before the first Northumbrian tracks were laid on the banks of Blyth and the Tyne around 1605.
The world’s first major work of railway engineering was the Grand Allies network of the 172O's, with it’s massive embankment and elegant 'Causey Arch' bridge which still stands at Tanfield, County Durham.
a downhill run with one lever brake, 1770
The Causey Arch, with 103 foot span, that carried two 4 foot gauge rail tracks.
The 'Grand Allies' were a trading combination of mine owners - the Liddell family of Ravensworth (who laid the first section of theTanfield wagonway about 1632), George Bowes, the Montague's and Thomas Ord of Newcastle.
Much of the country section of the route still exists as the Tanfield Railway and it's well worth a visit to this line that is preserved and run by enthusiasts who enjoy a real industrial steam railway. The railway was built to move coal 8 miles from the Durham pits to Keels on the Tyne at Dunston. It used horses and inclines to move wagons, nearly 200 years before Stephenson’s famous ‘Rocket’ left the Newcastle works. So the Stephenson’s had two centuries of civil and mechanical engineering development behind them before their revolutionary success with the world's first steam powered intercity railway between Liverpool and Manchester.
The preserved Tanfield Railway is the real thing not a fake unlike so many well funded tourist Museums. It’s success stands out against Tyneside’s failure to establish a shipyard museum or preserve the Stephenson Locomotive Works which despite its listed status is scheduled to be a site for a new hotel.
