Beginning with his experience as a
brakesman at Killingworth in 1803, he went on to state that he
was appointed to take the entire charge of the steam engines in
1813, and had superintended the railroads connected with the
numerous collieries of the grand allies from that time downward.
He had laid down or superintended the railways at Burradon, Mount
Moor, Springwell, Bedlington, Helton, and Darlington, besides
improving those at Killingworth, South Moor, and Derwent Crook.
He had constructed fifty-five steam-engines, of which sixteen
were locomotives. Some of these had been sent to France. The
engines constructed by him for the working of the Killingworth
Railroad, eleven years before, had continued steadily at work
ever since, and fulfilled his most sanguine expectations. He was
prepared to prove the safety of working high-pressure locomotives
on a railroad, and the superiority of this mode of transporting
goods over all others. As to speed, he said he had recommended
eight miles an hour with twenty tons, and four miles an hour with
forty tons; but he was quite confident that much more might be
done. Indeed he had no doubt they might go at the rate of twelve
miles. As to the charge that locomotives on a railroad would so
terrify the horses in the neighborhood that to travel on
horseback or to plow the adjoining fields would be rendered
highly dangerous, the witness said that horses learned to take no
notice of them, though there were horses that would shy at a
wheelbarrow.
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