Middleton Railway

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Carroll locomotive
Depiction on the painting The Collier from 1814. The locomotive shown is the Salamanca .

The Middleton Railway is the world's oldest continuously operating railway in the Hunslet district of Leeds.

history

Coal has been mined in Middleton since the 13th century. Charles Brandling was the owner of coal mines. In 1754, Richard Humble, of Tyneside, became its steward. Brandling was in competition with the Fentons in Rothwell, which could transport coal to Leeds by river, which was a significant disadvantage for the Middleton mines. Humble's solution was to build waggonways as he knew them from his home in the northeast. The first waggonway was built on Brandling's land in 1755, but crossed the bottom of neighbors to get to the riverside to the quay. In 1757 a waggonway was built in the direction of Leeds and Brandling moved a law in parliament for the permanence of the facility, which ensured its ratification (31 Geo.2, c.xxii, June 9, 1758); it was the first to be authorized to build a railroad. That year Charles Brandling, who owned almost all of Middleton, founded the railroad to send more coal to Leeds. The previously used transport routes were not developed, narrow and bumpy. That is why the railway was laid out on a new route with wooden rails and operated using individual carts. He secured the rights of way from Parliament because he did not own the entire ground of the route. This makes the railway the first to have a law passed. In 1758 it started operating as a horse-drawn tram, hauling coal from the numerous open-cast mines south of Leeds from Middleton to the River Aire . Every year over ten thousand coal carts could be transported to Leeds by rail. The coal was mainly used for stove fire besides the use in the emerging industry ( fire machines ). Leeds became an emerging industrial city. The railway was privately financed and operated, initially as a waggonway with horses and coal wagons. Around 1799, the wooden rails were replaced by the more permanent, 4-foot-1-inch (1,245 mm) gauge iron angle rails. In 1808, John Blenkinsop suggested to Mr. Brandling to use traveling engines instead of horses for cost reasons . In 1811, Blenkinsop was granted patent no. 3431 to drive steam locomotives using toothed wheels that meshed with toothed racks that were attached outside parallel to the rail. This first cog railway in the world was designed as an industrial railway Middleton Railway; it began its regular operation with steam locomotives on August 12, 1812.

Since 1960 it has been a volunteer-run museum railroad that runs on weekends and public holidays.

The line was originally built as a 1245 mm line (four feet and one inch gauge), but later switched to standard gauge . It runs on a 1.54 km (0.96 miles) route in the south of the northern English city of Leeds between Moor Road and Park Halt (the final stop) and brings day trippers to Middleton Park recreational area .

On June 24, 1812, the first economically successful steam locomotives in England began their work on this line - the Salamanca and the Prince Regent . They were the first locomotives with two cylinders and safety valves and came from the workshop of the steam pioneers John Blenkinsop and Matthew Murray (Fenton, Murray & Wood in Holbeck, Leeds). This established the reputation of Leeds as the city with the highest concentration of famous steam locomotives. The Round Foundry was founded from 1795 to 1797 by the company and partnership of James Fenton (1754-1834), Matthew Murray (1765-1826), David Wood (1761-1820) and financier William Lister as Fenton, Murray & Wood built. The foundry is considered the world's first machine factory and one of the cradles of the industrial revolution. Murray was the technical developer (technologist) responsible for incoming orders, Wood was in charge of day-to-day operations at the plants, and Fenton was in charge of accounting. The new factory, a huge three-story rotunda, was designed by Murray himself. It contained a central steam engine that powered all the machines in the building. Murray also built a house for himself that was adjacent to the factory. The whole plan was pioneering. Each room was heated by steam pipes, and the building became known as the Steam Hall . For the operation of the locomotives, the railway was equipped with fish belly rails with a lateral gear linkage. The two machines were very successful and remained in operation until the Brandling company, to which the coal mines belonged, went bankrupt in 1834. In the first few years the machines usually pulled 27 coal wagons (chaldrons) with a pulling weight of around 100 to 110 tons at a speed of around 6 to 7 km / h. The two locomotives Lord Wellington and Marquis Wellington followed a year later . Although the four machines did not even weigh 5 tons, they pulled trains of up to 38 coal wagons with a train weight of 140 tons at a speed of around 6 km / h. The four locomotives together replace a total of 52 horses and more than 200 men and were therefore considered a "great success". The world's first regular professional train driver was former mine worker James Hewitt. He was trained by Fenton, Murray & Wood . The first person nearly killed by a locomotive was a thirteen-year-old boy named John Bruce, who walked beside the rails, in February 1813. The Leeds Mercury reported it "as a warning to other workers".

Salamanca locomotive
Reproduced gear
End of the park stop

The first fatal accident involving a non-railroad worker is likely to have occurred along the route. On December 5, 1821, carpenter David Brook ran along the Middleton Railway in heavy sleek weather. He overlooked a train and was fatally injured.

There are no original stations, as only coal was transported on this railway and it was never used for passenger transport in regular operation. The remains of the underground coal mining system ( Kammerpfeilerbau or Örterbau ) from the 17th and 18th centuries can still be seen in the 2.5 km² large city park of Leeds in the form of over 270 holes and pits in the ground, which is why this area is now a listed building. First there were the smaller shafts in the lower part of the park. The coal was pulled up from them in baskets by means of gappers and brought on carts for loading on the river Aire. The installation of the railway made it possible to relocate the shafts in the upper part of today's park at the beginning of the 19th century. Larger pits made it possible to increase the production or the yield.

In 1960 the Middleton Railway, which had transported coal there, was to be shut down as unprofitable. A professor at Leeds University suggested that it should be preserved as the city's cultural heritage. The railway came into the care of the Middleton Railway Trust Ltd.

For the 200th anniversary of the railway operation with steam locomotives on 24./25. June 2012 came the Furness Railway Number 20, built in Manchester in 1863 ; it is Britain's oldest operational standard gauge locomotive (as of January 2016).

The Middleton Railway is the first railway

  • a law was passed for the construction of which
  • which was operated with locomotives that had two cylinders
  • which was operated with locomotives that had safety valves
  • which was operated with locomotives that were economically and technically successful
  • which was a rack railway
  • which is operated in standard gauge by an association exclusively by volunteers
  • with a professional engine driver
  • with the first fatal road casualty
  • which has been in operation since it was founded.

Web links

Commons : Middleton Railway  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rag to Railway Middleton Railway Trust, ISBN 978-0-9558264-5-0
  2. ^ A History of the Middleton Railway Eighth Edition, Middleton Railway Trust, ISBN 0-9516205-5-X , 2004
  3. ^ A History of the Middleton Railway. Leeds, Sixth Edition, Middleton Railway Trust Limited, 1990
  4. ^ Richard Balkwill and John Marshall: The Guinness Book of Railway Facts and Feats . 6th edition (1993). ISBN 0-85112-707-X : On December 5, 1821, carpenter David Brook ran along the Middleton Railway in heavy sleet weather. He overlooked a train and was fatally injured.
  5. http://www.furnessrailwaytrust.org.uk/locomotives.htm

Coordinates: 53 ° 46 ′ 26.8 "  N , 1 ° 32 ′ 20.4"  W.