Note 37 — Chapter V

At the Stephenson Memorial meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 26th of October, 1858, Mr. Hugh Taylor, chairman of the Northern Coal-owners, gave the following account of one of such visits made by Stephenson to Wylam, in the company of Mr. Nicholas Wood and himself: "It was, I think, in 1812, that Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Wood came to my house, then at Newburn, and after we had dined, we went and examined the locomotive then on Mr. Blackett's wagon-way. At that early date it went by a sort of cog-wheel; there was also something of a chain to it. There was no idea that the machine would be sufficiently adhesive to the rails by the action of its own weight; but I remember a man going before—that was after the chain was abrogated—and scattering ashes on the rails, in order to give it adhesiveness, and two or three miles an hour was about the rate of progress."