Tales of the old S&D Railway - and some bragging

[aiven]

I came across this write-up on the first passenger railway in the UK, the Stockton & Darlington Railway, when I was trying to find more information about my great great great grandfather John Graham. You see, he was the first Traffic Manager on this railway. Also, some 40 years of his work was documented in his railway logs, 4 volumes of notable occurances on the railways. I belive these are quite interesting. Here are some samples:

On 24th November 1831 William Ogle and Geo. Hodgson started from Shildon in a state of intoxication. Ogle galloped his horse before the wagons with the ‘Dandy Cart’ off the line, which tore up some of the rails. they met another horse, and the driver Michael Tailor, who they forced back to a siding and then upset. Afterwards, about two miles further on, they came into contact with the ‘William 4th’ engine, but they refused to go into a siding to let it pass, contrary to the rule. They got a loose rail and chair put on the line for the purpose of throwing the engine off the road. Edward Pease states that they had to be summoned before the magistrates whom he hoped would severely punish them as complaints against them had been so frequent..

On 18th January, 1833, another case of excess of speed was recorded when Charles Jennison, engine driver, was reported for having run a trip from Shildon to Stockton and back in 4 1/2 hours including stoppages – a distance of 40 miles. He was ordered by Edward Pease to appear before the Directors, who sacked him.



John Graham's son, the engineer William emigrated to Norway, where he assisted in the building of the country's first railroad between Oslo and Eidsvoll and then became Norway's first engine driver.

No wonder I like trains, it's in my blood ;)

[Gumboots]

Well yes, first passenger railway, but not the first to use locomotives to haul passengers. They used horses for passenger traffic until 1833, by which time others were already using locomotives for that purpose. But a good little railway nonetheless.

And getting sacked for speeding at 10 mph is hilarious.

[aiven]

Well yes, first passenger railway, but not the first to use locomotives to haul passengers. They used horses for passenger traffic until 1833, by which time others were already using locomotives for that purpose. But a good little railway nonetheless.

True, they used locomotives for goods though, mostly coal I believe. It appears that a lot of the drama on the railroad happened in conflicts between the horse-driven carts and the engines. The engines were very hard to reverse, so the horse-carts should always back up if they met on the track, some of the drivers were unhappy about that though...

And getting sacked for speeding at 10 mph is hilarious.

[Gumboots]

Really the game should start with the S&D, but the horse thing would obviously be a problem. The other problem is that RT3's animation coding for locos can't deal with the ancient walking beam style that were used before Stephenson's designs advanced to the Rocket and Planet. The really early ones were incredibly unreliable too, as well as being extremely slow, so overall probably not what most people would consider playable.