Stockton & Darlington Railway

Pearce, Thomas R. The Locomotives of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Historical Model Railway Society. 250pp.
This book is exactly what it says that it is and is of inestimable importance as it enables the reader to know as far as it can now be known which locomotives operated on the railway. It needs to be noted that originally the locomotives lacked either numbers or names which makes research extremely difficult. Furthermore, as in later years names were exchanged and bits of locomotives were exchanged. The book was the subject of a remarkably generous review from David Jenkinson in Backtrack Volume 12 page 61, and by Alan Cliff in Archive No. 14 p. 32. but ridiculously few copies of this work are held in public libraries (the book is so good that it could be used as a dip-stick for the quality of what used to be public libraries. A copy was obtained from North Yorkshire County Library where it had been seen at such tiny libraries as Kirbymoorside, but is not available in what it thought itself to be "City of Culture" Norwich. In his Foreword the Author notes that he "wrote this book because it didn't exist": surely the most admirable reason for writing a book and one wishes that more books were written on this basis. The book is still in-print and is obtainable from the Historical Model Railway Society (HMRS), and is remarkably cheap for Members.

The general division of the work is Background:(The People; General Note; History & Development; Locomotives at the 1875 Jubilee; Track Development; Liveries); Principles and Valve Gear:(Basic Mechanics; Gab Gear); The Early Engines: 1825-6.(Design; The Locomotives; "Chittapratt"; Nos. 3, 4 & 5); "Royal George" and Successors: 1827-31. ("Royal George": "Experiment"; Comparisons.); The Double Tender Classes: 1831-46. (The "Majestic" and "Director" Classes; "Magnet" and The "Enterprise" Class; The "Tory" and "Miner" Classes.); Passenger Traffic: 1837-60. (General; The Bury Engines; Mainly 0-4-2's & 2-4-0's); Mineral Locomotives: 1845-75. (The 0-6-0 Long Boiler Engines; E. Craven's Notes on "Gazelle" Trials); The 4-4-0's: 1860-74, and The "Gamecocks": 1873-6. (The 4-4-0's; The "Gamecocks".); The Tank Engines and The Final Mineral Engines.(The Tank Engines; The Final 0-6-0's).
Appendixes list Locomotive Names; Drivers' Names. Renumbering out of Class; Theodore West Sketch Sheets and Clement E. Stretton's Drawings: Numerical and Alphabetical Lists of Locomotives: List of engines in numerical order, with page and figure index; Alphabetical list of named engines.List of Lines and Opening Dates: Map of System.

Lowe, James W. British steam locomotive builders. 1975.
Lowe is cited by Pearce: as usual Lowe is very concise and his text has an excellent degree of connectivity.

4-4-0 No. 161 Lowther
Stockton & Darlington Railway photographs. British Railway Journal, 1988, (24), 188-9.
Photographs of 4-4-0 No. 161 Lowther with 5 ton capacity crane built by Cowans Sheldon probably in Darlington North Road works yard. Notes by Ken Hoole.

Drivers

The reminiscences of George Graham, an early driver of No.1 engine and son of John Graham, the first Traffic Manager of the line, recorded by a Mr. Harold Oxtoby in about 1896, gives much useful information and detail about the day to day operation of the line in the early years. These memories are based in the main on his father's notebooks, referred to above, a set of four held at the Science Museum (together with a later resum~) which, having been written at the time are rather more reliable. Nevertheless, George Graham adds much from his own experiences in the way of later adventures and behavior.

John Graham: Notebooks (4 vols.) 1831-1845; M.S., Science Museum.

George Graham: Reminiscences (recorded by H. Oxtoby c.1896-7); M.S., P.R.O. Kew & typed version, Stockton-on-Tees Reference Library.

2004-10-23