Hetton colliery railway
Encyclopedia
The Hetton colliery railway was an 8-mile-long private railway opened in 1822 by the Hetton Coal Company at Hetton Lyons, County Durham
County Durham
County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...

, England. It was the first to be designed from the start to be operated without animal power, and was George Stephenson
George Stephenson
George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives...

's first entirely new line. When it closed in 1959 it was the oldest mineral railway in Britain. It ran from Hetton Colliery, about two miles south of Houghton-le-Spring
Houghton-le-Spring
Houghton-le-Spring is part of the City of Sunderland in the county of Tyne and Wear, North East England that has its recorded origins in Norman times. It is situated almost equidistant between the cathedral city of Durham 7 miles to the south-west and the centre of the City of Sunderland about 6...

, to a landing stage on the River Wear
River Wear
The River Wear is located in North East England, rising in the Pennines and flowing eastwards, mostly through County Durham, to the North Sea at Sunderland.-Geology and history:...

.

The first five locomotives were built by Stephenson between 1820 and 1822, as a development of those at Killingworth
Killingworth
Killingworth, formerly Killingworth Township, is a town north of Newcastle Upon Tyne, in North Tyneside, United Kingdom.Built as a planned town in the 1960s, most of Killingworth's residents commute to Newcastle, or the city's surrounding area. However, Killingworth itself has a sizeable...

 - 0-4-0
0-4-0
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-0 represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven...

 types with chain-coupled wheels. Four of them had names: Hetton, Dart, Tallyho and Star.

They incorporated his steam springs in an attempt to compensate for the reaction to the vertical cylinders which had caused previous locomotives to rock excessively, and were not entirely successful. For a while a section of the line was an inclined plane operated by stationary engines. The 1822 engine however continued in service until 1912, being rebuilt in 1857 and 1882, and is now preserved in the Shildon Locomotion Museum
Shildon Locomotion Museum
Shildon Locomotion Museum is a railway museum in Shildon, County Durham, England. The museum is a branch of the National Railway Museum , which is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry...

.

The Company acquired limited liability in 1884 and later built two more locomotives, "Lyons" and "Eppleton", 0-4-0
0-4-0
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-0 represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven...

T, gear driven, with vertical boilers.

In 1947 control of the line passed to the new state-owned National Coal Board
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the mines on "vesting day", 1 January 1947...

. Because of falling demand, it closed on 12 September 1959.
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