Fawdon Wagonway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fawdon Wagonway
Drawing from the Thomas Harrison Fair, 1844
Drawing from the Thomas Harrison Fair, 1844
Route of the Fawdon Wagonway
Remains of a dismantled railway bridge, 2005
Route length: 2.2 km
Gauge : 1372 mm ( Scottish gauge )

The Fawdon Wagonway was operated from 1818 to 1826 2.2 km long works railway in Fawdon near Newcastle upon Tyne with a track width of 4 feet 6 inches (1372 mm). On the steep sections of the route, it was operated as a cable car with ropes and on the less steep sections as a horse-drawn tram . It was the first cableway in which the carriages were connected to the moving rope via a tensioning claw and could be detached from it.

history

The Fawdon Colliery colliery was founded around 1810. Their coal was originally transported to Wallsend via the Kenton and Coxlodge Waggonway . In 1818 Benjamin Thompson, one of the owners of the colliery, built the Fawdon Wagonway on a new route for the transport of coal south to Scotswood . For this he used a cable car powered by steam engines on the steep sections of the route . The route caused a lot of dispute between Thompson and the owners of the property crossed.

Benjamin Thompson installed a number of stationary steam engines along the one mile and three furlongs (2.2 km) stretch between Kenton Bank and Hotchpudding Planes. The steam engines hauled the coal wagons through the hilly landscape at a speed of 11 km / h (7 mph ). The rope ran between two steam engines. It was clamped in via a clamping claw attached to the car and alternately wound onto drums at the ends of the engines. Its length was twice the distance between the drives. At the point where the railway crossed a public road, the rope was brought down by friction rollers into a cable duct and led under a plank bridge to the other side of the street, where it rose again over the ground. Before the car got to the public road, the boy who was driving on it released the rope from the tensioning claw. The momentum carried the car across the street, and the boy hung the rope back on the tensioning claw as the car continued to move. The cable car was in operation until 1826 when the Brunton and Shields Railway (later the Seaton Burn Wagonway) was built to Whitehill Point on the Tyne .

The routes of the Fawdon Wagonway and the Seaton Burn Wagonway were used in the 1890s together with the route of the Coxlodge Wagonway for the route of the Fawdon Railway. The 1920s Ordnance Survey map showed a new Fawdon Waggonway leading to the Coxlodge Colliery Jubilee Pit. The wagonway is still preserved as a low earthwork on which an asphalt road runs. In 2003, some excavations were carried out in the Newcastle Great Park area.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eight interesting facts about Fawdon & Kingston Park. Evening Chronicle, January 1, 2012. Updated February 22, 2013.
  2. ↑ Jennifer Morrison: Tyne and Wear HER (15348): Fawdon Waggonway to Scotswood - Details.
  3. ↑ a b c d Jennifer Morrison: Tyne and Wear HER (1078): Fawdon Wagonway - details.
  4. ↑ Erskine Hazard, Observations upon Rail-roads, The Franklin Journal and American Mechanics' Magazine , Volume III, No. 4 (April 1827); P. 275.
  5. ^ Fawdon Wagonway, Structural Images of the North East ( September 2, 2012 memento in the Internet Archive ), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, March 26, 2004.
  6. ^ History of Railways in Northumberland.
  7. ↑ Weetslade Colliery.

Coordinates: 55 ° 1 '24.96 "  N , 1 ° 38' 38.4"  W.