The Early Pioneers of Steam by Stuart Hylton

Author:Stuart Hylton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

It was a public toll railway, on which independent hauliers used their own horses and wagons. The company did not operate its own trains. The railway had a gauge of 4ft 2in (127cm) and a spacing of about 5ft between the centres of the stone blocks on which the rails were mounted. The coming of faster, more powerful and heavier steam locomotives spelt the end for horse-drawn railways. William James, a shareholder, tried to persuade George Stephenson to provide a steam locomotive but Stephenson declined, on the grounds that the cast-iron plateway would not bear the weight of a locomotive. Attempts were made to sell the railway to the London and Brighton Railway, so that they could use part of its route to extend their own trackbed. But the sale was not completed and in August 1846, with Parliament’s blessing, the railway was closed.

Oystermouth Railway (1806), the world’s first passenger railway service, was built under an 1804 Act of Parliament to carry limestone from a quarry at Mumbles, and coal from the Clyne Valley, to Swansea. From there it would be transhipped to the Swansea Canal and other markets. It was called the Oystermouth Railway after a tiny fishing village along the route. One of the leading lights in its promotion was the copper and coal magnate John (later Sir John) Morris, Bart. The enabling act permits haulage by ‘men, horses or otherwise’ – a fairly common form of wording on Railway Acts of this era, though the founders can surely have had no other option but horse power in mind. But, oddly enough, a short-lived attempt was actually made to run the railway by sail power.

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