CHAPTER XII.

FIRST EMPLOYMENT OF IRON IN RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. THE STEAM-ENGINE INDIRECTLY APPLIED TO DRAW THE COALS OUT OF THE PITS

THROUGH

THE MEDIUM OF WATER-WHEELS.-CURR'S IMPROVEMENTS IN SHAFT FITTINGS

CONVEYANCE.

AND UNDERGROUND

RAILWAYS were now in use in many of the coalfields, but this system of conveyance had received its greatest development in the Newcastle-on-Tyne district, where all the collieries were connected by rail with their shipping places on the Tyne or Wear. An inadequate idea of the character of the railways of this period has been entertained by many writers who have referred to them. This appears to have originated in the remarks of Arthur Young, who, in the account of his northern tour in 1768, states that "the coal-waggon roads, from the pits to the water, are great works, carried over all sorts of inequalities of ground." From this casual description it seems to

have been inferred that the railways followed the undulations of the ground. Such, however, was by no means the case.

A very exact account of the manner of constructing railways in the North of England, in 1765, is given by an intelligent French traveller, M. Jars, who terms them nouvelles routes. In order to facilitate the conveyance of the loaded waggons, the railways were laid off as much as possible with a uniform descent towards the depôts at the river; great expense being incurred to accomplish this desirable arrangement. Oak sleepers, from four to eight inches square, were placed at distances of two or three feet from each other, and to these the rails, six or seven inches broad by four or five inches thick, and sawn truly square, were secured by means of wooden pins. The ordinary gauge of the rails was about four feet. Some of the railways were nine or ten miles in length, and served to convey the coal from several collieries. These early railways were of the "edge rail,” or modern type, the flanges being upon the wheels of the waggons.

Up till the year 1767 all the railways in the kingdom were constructed wholly of wood, with the exception of the employment of small bands of iron. to strengthen the joints of the rails. But wooden rails were liable to rapid deterioration, and the demand for iron at Coalbrookdale happening to be slack

in this year, it occurred to Richard Reynolds, one of the partners, that rails of cast-iron might be employed with advantage. A small quantity were accordingly cast as an experiment. They were four inches in breadth, an inch and a-quarter in thickness, and four feet in length, and were laid upon and secured to the previously existing wooden rails. They were found to improve the railway so much that the same course was pursued with all the railways at the works. Between this period and the end of the eighteenth century considerable progress was made in the substitution of iron for wood in railway construction.

While the application of the Newcomen steamengine to work the pumps had afforded a satisfactory solution of the problem of raising water from the collieries, no adequate machinery had yet been invented for drawing the coal out of the deeper pits now being sunk. At Walker Colliery, alike the deepest and most important in the North of England at this time, a machine worked by eight horses was employed in the work. The horses were kept at a sharp trot, and a large horizontal wheel was used to give greater velocity to the drum or rope-roll; but all the machine could do was to bring up a load of 6 cwts. of coal from a depth of 100 fathoms in two minutes.

An attempt made at Hartley Colliery to apply the steam-engine to this work attracted considerable attention at the time. The arrangement was patented by a Mr. Joseph Oxley, in 1763, and the first machine was built at Hartley in the same year. A second and improved one was fitted up at the same place in 1765, which raised coal at the rate of a basket a minute, and was for a short time regarded as the greatest improvement in the coal trade since the invention of the steam-engine. The machine, however, was subject to frequent breakages. The celebrated James Watt, who went to see it in 1768, speaks of it as performing its work sluggishly and irregularly, having no fly-wheel.

The steam-engine being at this period only a singleacting machine, was ill-adapted for producing an even rotative motion directly. The attempts to use its power indirectly in raising coal were more successful. One of the earliest arrangements to effect this—the invention of Mr. Michael Menzies was applied at Chatershaugh Colliery, on the Wear, in 1753. The basket of coals was raised by the descent of a bucket of water, a steam-engine being employed to re-pump the water to the surface. By this means a basket containing 5 cwts. of coal was drawn from a depth of fifty fathoms in two minutes. An arrangement on the same principle, known as the balance-tub system, was subsequently largely employed, more

especially in collieries where the water used in raising the coals could be run off by an adit without requiring to be pumped up again.

The most approved method, however, and the one which came into most general use at the deeper collieries, consisted in applying the steam-engine to raise water into elevated cisterns for driving waterwheels, by means of which the coals were drawn. Double water-wheels, with their buckets arranged in reverse order, had been in use at the Alloa Collieries, on the Frith of Forth, since the beginning of the century. The introduction of these machines, as well as the construction of large reservoirs to provide a supply of water for the engines at this colliery establishment, was probably due to Sorocould, as they appear to date from the time of his visit to Alloa. It is stated that Mr. Brown, of Throckley, when at Alloa, in 1774, was so much struck with the double water-wheel that he made a drawing of it, and on his return home designed one on the same principle to suit the deep pits at Newcastle. But the idea of employing water-wheels for drawing coal had already begun to receive attention, and in this same year we find Smeaton erecting one at Sir Roger Newdigate's Colliery, at Griff, in Warwickshire, for this purpose. To economise water, Smeaton employed a single water-wheel which always travelled in the same direction, the reversing of the drum being

I