By REBECCA DIXON

Last updated at 14:40, Friday, 20 March 2009

BORN into a poor, illiterate Wylam family, George Stephenson grew up to become the “Father of Railways”.

Famous for building the first public railway line in the world to use steam engines, for nigh on 13 years his portrait graced the £5 note, alongside an engraving of one of his inventions – the Rocket the first, and undoubtedly the most famous, “modern locomotive”.

George was the second of six children born in 1781 to Robert and Mabel Stephenson. His father was a fireman for Wylam Colliery, supporting his family on a meagre wage of 12 shillings a week – which left no money for schooling.

Instead George had no option but to work from a young age, earning just twopence a day herding cows and preventing them from trespassing on the waggonway through Wylam which was used by the local colliery.

At the age of 14 he went to work with his father who had found employment at the nearby Dewley Burn Colliery. George was hired as a “picker” and paid to clear the coal of slate, stone and other dross.

By the time he turned 18, he was using his wages to pay for night classes, where he learned to read and write.

In 1801 George began work at Black Callerton colliery as a brakesman, controlling the winding gear of the pit.

A year later, now aged 21, he married local farm servant, Frances Henderson, and the couple moved to Willington Quay, near Newcastle. To supplement his income, in his spare time he made shoes and mended clocks.

On October 16, 1803, George’s first and only son was born, and named Robert after his grandfather.

A year later, the family moved to West Moor, near Killingworth where George found work at Killingworth pit.

He became so fascinated with the engines he would take them to pieces in order to understand how they were constructed.

The couple went on to have a daughter, who died in infancy in 1805, and a year later Frances herself died of consumption.

Grief-stricken, George left his son with a local woman while he went to work in Scotland. But in a few short months he had returned to Killingworth, probably because his father was blinded in a mining accident.

George remained at Killingworth for almost 18 years, during which time he rose from obscurity to international fame.

He first came to prominence in 1811 following an accident which flooded Killingworth High Pit.

All previous attempts to fix the pumping engine had failed, but George managed to repair it and was subsequently promoted to enginewright, responsible for maintaining and repairing all of the colliery engines.

At about this time George was also attracting attention for another reason – his inventions.

His cottage provoked much excitement among the local villagers as it was full of his odd and eccentric gadgets, and in 1814 he cemented his reputation as an inventor by designing his first locomotive.

The travelling engine was built to haul coal on the Killingworth waggonway, and dubbed the Blücher after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.

It could haul 30 tonnes of coal up a hill at 4 mph and became the first of 16 locomotives that George produced at Killingworth.

In 1818, despite his lack of any scientific knowledge, George began to experiment with a miner’s safety lamp. Through trial and error, he devised a lamp in which the air entered via tiny holes, thus the lamp could burn without causing an explosion.

At the same time, the eminent scientist Sir Humphry Davy, was looking at the problem himself, and presented his design to the Royal Society.

Davy was awarded £2,000 for his invention, while George was accused of stealing his idea.

Although a local committee of inquiry exonerated George, and awarded him £1,000 for his design, Davy went to his grave refusing to accept that such an uneducated man could come up with the solution that he had.

Four years after Davy’s death, in 1833, a House of Commons committee found that George had equal claim to having invented the lamp.

It has since been suggested that the regional nickname “Geordie” actually stems from the miners who used George’s or Geordie’s lamp.

Throughout this period George was continually working on improving his locomotives.

Because the engines were too heavy for wooden rails, they had to run on cast iron ones, but these proved brittle.

Together with Newcastle chemist and industrialist William Losh, George successfully improved the design of the rails to reduce breakage and in 1819 was given the task of building an eight-mile railroad from Hetton to the River Wear at Sunderland.

In 1821,George was appointed chief engineer for the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR), a 25-mile railway intended to connect the collieries near Bishop Auckland to the River Tees at Stockton, passing through Darlington on the way.

George surveyed the line, helped by his son, Robert, now 18, but despite having patented his own design for cast iron rails, he decided to use more malleable wrought iron. Work on the track began in 1822.

George also went into partnership with the S & DR company director Edward Pease to build the locomotives for the new line.

In 1825 the Newcastle works completed its first locomotive – the Locomotion – which went on to become the engine to officially open the S&DR line on September 27 of that year.

Driven by George and hauling an 80-tonne load of coal and flour nine miles in two hours, it reached a top speed of 24 miles per hour.

A purpose-built passenger car, the Experiment, was then attached, and carried dignitaries on the opening journey. It was the first time passenger traffic had been run on a steam locomotive railway.

In 1826 George was appointed engineer and provider of locomotives for the Bolton and Leigh railway and went on to be appointed chief engineer of the proposed Liverpool & Manchester railway.

Here he faced a number of engineering problems, including how to cross an unstable peat bog, which he eventually overcame by “floating” the line across it.

When the directors of the Liverpool & Manchester company were unsure whether to use locomotives or stationary engines on their new line, they decided to stage a competition at Rainhill that would ultimately put George in the history books.

In October 1829, he and his contemporaries lined up for the trials. Each engine had to pull a load of three times its own weight at a speed of at least 10 mph, 20 times up and down the track – a distance roughly equivalent to a return trip between Liverpool and Manchester.

Ten locomotives were originally entered for the competition, but only five turned up and two of these were withdrawn because of mechanical problems.

In front of a crowd of thousands George’s locomotive, built with the help of his son, Robert, forged ahead – the Rocket was crowned the winner and to this day the engine remains synonymous with the Stephenson family.

George’s locomotive reached a record speed of 36 miles per hour and went on to open the Liverpool & Manchester line on September 15, 1830, in the presence of the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, and a large number of important people from the government and industry.

Only one thing marred the day – as George led a procession of eight trains in the engine the Northumbrian the Rocket, driven by an assistant engineer, knocked down and killed the MP for Liverpool William Huskisson.

Despite this tragedy the success of the line proved the catalyst for the development of the railways in Britain and the production of locomotives.

George became famous, and was offered the position of chief engineer on a variety of other railways.

Only one route seemed to elude him – and that passed through his home village.

Although shortlisted for the task of building the Newcastle to Carlisle line, along with Britain’s greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the job eventually fell to a shareholder in the company, Francis Giles.

Completed in 1838, the line became the first railway to cross Britain, from the Carlisle canal in the west to Gateshead in the east.

Despite this, George was being offered more work than he could cope with.

He worked on the North Midland line from Derby to Leeds, the York and North Midland line from Normanton to York, the Manchester and Leeds, the Birmingham and Derby, the Sheffield and Rotherham, among many others.

He bought a Georgian mansion near Chesterfield, and had interests in coalmines, ironworks and limestone quarries in the area.

He also owned a small farm where he experimented with stock breeding, new types of manure and animal food.

Although he had remarried in 1820, his second wife, Elizabeth Hindley, died in 1845. Two years later George became the first president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

He married again, this time to his housekeeper Ellen Gregory, but the union was shortlived as George contracted pleurisy just six months later and died on August 12, 1848. He was 67.

His birthplace in Wylam is now owned by the National Trust. It has been furnished to reflect life in 1781, the year George was born, and is open to the public.

First published at 09:47, Friday, 06 March 2009
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk