A junction on the Tanfield Railway at Causey Arch station in County Durham. The railway, which dates back to 1725 and days of wooden rails and horse-drawn waggons, still runs trains along this route on its way south from Sunniside to East Tanfield. The Tanfield was originally a freight line only: it was its southerly neighbour, the Stockton and Darlington, that made history by carrying fare-paying passengers on September 27th, 1825. The title given to this extract, ‘Private Risk, Public Benefit’, is taken from the railway’s Latin motto periculum privatum utilitas publica, which was emblazoned on a flag carried by the horseman who rode at the head of the train on that historic day — until Stephenson shooed him aside so he could go faster.
Introduction
However pure Science may be, a scientist’s head may be turned by ambition, politics or gain, resulting in great harm to social and economic progress. Happily, George Stephenson was not such a man, as Michael Longridge of Bedlington Iron Works testified in a letter (here abridged) to Edinburgh engineer George Buchanan in January 1832.
Bedlington Iron Works, Jan. 16th, 1832.
DEAR Sir,
I cannot better reply to your letter of the 12th instant, than by giving you a short account of the reasons which induced me to attempt the substitution of wrought iron in the place of cast iron Railway bars.*
In the year 1818, an offer was made to me for supplying these works with coals at a reduced price, provided the Bedlington Iron Company would lay a Railway from the colliery. I was so convinced of the superiority of malleable [i.e. wrought]* iron over cast iron, as the material of which a Railway bar ought to be made, that I resolved upon laying down malleable iron Railway bars upon the road which the Bedlington Iron Company intended to make.
Several minor improvements have since been made, and I send you herewith a drawing of a rail, which we are now making for the Stockton and Darlington Railway: you will observe that the bars are fastened to the chairs or pedestals by iron wedges instead of nails, which has been found to be a considerable improvement.
* Cast iron had many admirers and more importantly many investors, but cast iron bars are more brittle than wrought or malleable iron, and from the start heavy steam locomotives did great damage to cast iron rails: see The First Train Journey by Steam. The decision to use wrought iron rails at Bedlington and later on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world’s first public line, was therefore of incalculable importance for our economic and social progress at a critical period.
* The terms wrought iron and malleable iron are used interchangeably here. Wrought is an archaic past-tense form of work and refers to metal that has been worked when hot, e.g. shaped with a hammer in a blacksmith’s forge, or rolled in a steel mill.
Précis
In 1832, Michael Longridge of the Bedlington Iron Works wrote to fellow engineer George Buchanan and explained why he preferred wrought iron instead of the usual cast iron in railway tracks. It all began, he said, when he laid a railway to a local colliery for coal deliveries, and his researches showed that wrought iron was the better choice. (59 / 60 words)
In 1832, Michael Longridge of the Bedlington Iron Works wrote to fellow engineer George Buchanan and explained why he preferred wrought iron instead of the usual cast iron in railway tracks. It all began, he said, when he laid a railway to a local colliery for coal deliveries, and his researches showed that wrought iron was the better choice.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: despite, if, just, must, not, or, ought, whereas.
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