Pockerley Waggonway
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This operating railway gives visitors a flavour of rail travel in the early 1800s as it cuts through the Georgian landscape in the valley below Pockerley Old Hall. One of three working replica locomotives hauls passengers on a one kilometre trip in recreated carriages from the period.
The 1815 Steam Elephant was built for Wallsend Colliery by William Chapman and John Buddle. Neither the engine itself nor the original drawings for Steam Elephant survived and the construction of the replica for Beamish was based on a remarkable series of sketches and exhaustive researches by Museum staff.
George Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1 was built in 1825, the replica had its first public steaming at Beamish in 1975, 150 years after the original was unveiled on the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
The most recent addition to the collection is a replica of Puffing Billy, built in 1813 by William Hedley to haul coal from Wylam Colliery to the River Tyne. This is one on the world’s oldest surviving locomotives, the original is now on display in the Science Museum in London.
The Great Shed, where these locomotives are housed, is based upon the lost buildings of Timothy Hackworth’s works at Shildon. Incorporated in the structure is original ironwork from George Stephenson’s Forth Banks works in Newcastle. On display here are genuine artefacts from the period including an original Stockton and Darlington Railway passenger carriage (on loan from NRM).