On 18 November 1822, an engineer opened the regulator of a newly-delivered locomotive in a siding of the newly-sunk Hetton Lyons Colliery. The chaldron waggons clunked and bumped as they took up the slack and the train made its way slowly along the first leg of the nine-mile journey to the then-new staithes close to the mouth of the River Wear at Sunderland.
This railway used two of George Stephenson’s newly-built steam locomotives to haul coal for the first 1½ miles to Hetton Dene bank-foot; from there, two steam-powered stationary engines pulled the waggons to
