Abstract
ON January 9, 1843, William Hedley, one of the pioneers of the locomotive and iron railway, died at Burnhopeside Hall, near Lanchester, Co. Durham, and was afterwards buried at his birthplace, Newburn on the Tyne. He was then sixty-three years of age, having been born on July 13, 1779. He seems to have had a good education and in his 'twenties became a viewer at the colliery in the village of Wylam, eight miles west of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where George Stephenson was born in. 1781. The colliery was the property of Christopher Blackett, a man with progressive ideas, who in 1804-5 had had a locomotive built at Gateshead to Treyithick's plans. This engine, it appears, was never put into service. In 1811, with Blackett's approval, Hedley made both model and full-size experiments to show that a locomotive with smooth wheels could operate successfully on smooth rails. These experiments led to the construction of some of the earliest locomotives, which were used for the transport of coal from Wylam Colliery to the staithes at Lemington, five miles lower down the river. One of these engines, supposed to have been built in 1813, is the historic Puffing Billy, now in the Science Museum, South Kensington. Hedley was as much concerned with the winning of coal as its transport, and during the last twenty years of his life worked or owned various mines in Durham and Northumberland. His own share in the development of the locomotive was clearly stated by him in a letter of December 10, 1836, to Dr. Lardner, who in a lecture at the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle, had spoken of George Stephenson as the “Father of the Locomotive”.
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William Hedley : Locomotive Pioneer. Nature 151, 50 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151050a0