A history of the world’s third oldest steam locomotive
Rolling back the years
Railway history was rewritten this summer when it was revealed that George Stephenson’s Killingworth ‘Billy’ is actually the world’s third-oldest existing steam locomotive. THOMAS BRIGHT tells the tale of this extraordinary survivor.
Until recently, most of what we knew about George Stephenson’s ‘Billy’ was wrong. Of all the surviving early locomotives, ‘Billy’ is arguably the most obscure, and despite hailing from the pen of the ‘Father of the Railways’, its history and provenance have been an enigma, and few have appreciated the history and significance of this Georgian relic.
But in June this year, ‘Billy’ was finally thrust into the limelight when new research revealed that one of Britain’s most overlooked and misunderstood locomotives – previously believed to have been built in 1826 after Stephenson’s trailblazing Locomotion – was built in 1816 and therefore, in fact, the third-oldest surviving locomotive in the world.
If this antiquated and otherwise unremarkable colliery engine wasn’t a national treasure before, it certainly is now.
But aside from the greater significance it now holds, ‘Billy’ boasts an incredible history, in which it was still in steam over six decades after it was built, and shipped to America as part of an exposition. Why, therefore, is ‘Billy’ not more famous? More importantly, how did such a fundamental error in understanding its origins go unnoticed for more than a century?
FROM NORTHUMBERLAND TO CHICAGO
The recent revelation about the true origins of ‘Billy’ is the result of months of study by Dr Michael Bailey MBE – president of the Stephenson Locomotive Society and one of Britain’s renowned early railway historians – and his colleague Peter Davidson.
Dr Bailey says: “The previous thinking regarding ‘Billy’ was that it was one of two locomotives that had been made in c1826 by Robert Stephenson & Co. at its Newcastle workshops. They were thought to have been made straight after Locomotion and sent to Springwell Colliery in County Durham.
“It was later said to have been transferred from Springwell to Killingworth Colliery at some point and carried on working there. Many people subsequently trotted out the same story until it became ‘fact’.”
What was fact, however, was that for the majority of its working life, it led a routine existence, hauling trains of chaldron waggons loaded with coal. This workaday life, combined with the fact it was never officially named – its moniker is a nickname bestowed upon it by the Killingworth footplateman – arguably contributed towards its subsequent low-profile status in preservation.
As with many early locomotives, records about ‘Billy’s’ working life are scarce, and this lack of verifiable data is one of the contributing factors behind the misapprehension of its history. Nonetheless, we know it survived in service at Killingworth until 1879, when it was withdrawn and set aside at West Moor pit. By that time, it was the last of Stephenson’s Killingworth engines left. As its sister locomotives became uneconomical to repair or modify, they were withdrawn and cannibalised, and their parts were refitted to ‘Billy’, keeping it running longer than they had. Amazingly, this wasn’t the end of ‘Billy’s’ career. Two years later, this antique locomotive, which was obsolete just over a decade after its construction, was returned to steam and driven under its own power to Tyneside where, on June 9 1881, it formed part of the major Newcastle exhibition celebrating the centenary of George Stephenson’s birth. There it was united with a number of fellow survivors from the dawn of the railways – including Timothy Hackworth’s Derwent and Stephenson’s Locomotion.
That ‘Billy’ survived in service long enough to pay tribute to its creator is testament to the ruggedness and adaptability of the engineer’s original design, and no doubt had they lived long enough, both George and his son Robert would have been proud to see so many of their engines still running.
Such an event would have been a fitting bookend to ‘Billy’s’ life, but the most extraordinary chapter in its history – until recently at least – was to come two years later.
During the Stephenson centenary, Charles Palmer – one of the proprietors of the Killingworth Colliery – donated ‘Billy’ to the city of Newcastle, “although the city fathers weren’t at all sure what to do with it!” says Dr Bailey. News of the centenary event had reached the railway industry in America, and in 1883 the city of Chicago held a major ‘Exposition of Railway Appliances’ on May 24-June 28 that year.
“‘Billy’ was invited to attend,” says Dr Bailey, “although it’s quite possible that it was ‘Puffing Billy’ that they actually wanted. So little time was allocated to the shipping move to Chicago that it arrived two days before the close of the exposition, after which it was shipped back to Newcastle – an extraordinary turn of events!” ‘Billy’ was, therefore, the first steam locomotive built to run in Britain and exhibited across the Atlantic.
Upon its return to Britain, ‘Billy’ was displayed on a plinth at the northern end of Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge across the Tyne in Newcastle, where it remained until 1896 when it was moved to one of the platforms at Newcastle Central station. From 1945 until 1982, ‘Billy’ was housed in the Municipal Museum of Science & Industry in Newcastle, before being transferred to the former Metro Test Centre in North Shields, which became the Stephenson Railway Museum (SRM) in 1988.
sooner or later
And so matters rested until 2016, when Dr Bailey presented a paper at the Sixth International Early Railways Conference about the development of Stephenson’s early Killingworth locomotives. His findings led him to consider a full archaeological study of the sole survivor – ‘Billy’ – with his SLS colleague Peter Davidson. An anonymous benefactor sponsored the study, which was carried out with the full support of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums Keeper of Science & Industry, John Clayson, and Museum Manager Geoff Woodward.
Dr Bailey says: “Peter and I started in September and we finished the hands-on work in January this year. We then spent two months writing our report for Newcastle upon Tyne’s Discovery Museum and presented our report to Geoff Woodward in March.”
The results of that report have completely altered what we know about ‘Billy’, and changed its significance almost beyond recognition. What was arguably an ugly duckling, lingering in the shadows of Locomotion and Rocket, has now become a swan. Michael’s earlier research had confirmed that ‘Billy’ was not built by Robert Stephenson & Co. in 1826, but by George Stephenson at the West Moor Colliery in 1816 – the “third or fourth” of seven locomotives built by Stephenson for use on the Killingworth system.
This means ‘Billy’ dates from Stephenson’s first dalliances with steam locomotives and was built just two years after his pioneering Blücher, which was a small trial machine for demonstrating to the colliery directors that locomotives could perform useful work and save them money.
It also makes ‘Billy’ the third-oldest surviving steam locomotive in the world, after William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth’s ‘Puffing Billy’ and ‘Wylam Dilly’ of 1813, and as both those locomotives were built for the 5ft gauge Wylam tramway ‘Billy’ is also the oldest standard gauge locomotive in the world. But why have so many learned historians and academics mistakenly believed that ‘Billy’ was built in 1826? Dr Bailey explains: “In 1862, Samuel Smiles published Lives of the Engineers, the third volume of which dealt with George and Robert Stephenson. In it is a woodcut of an ‘Old Killingworth Locomotive, still in use’. This was to illustrate his statement that ‘the identical engines, constructed by Mr Stephenson in 1816, are to this day to be seen in regular useful work upon the Killingworth Railway…’ But no-one had then taken a photograph of one of these locomotives. “What had happened is that R.H. Bleasdale, a photographer of early railway subjects, had photographed an 1826-built Robert Stephenson & Co. locomotive in use on the Springwell Colliery line in County Durham. A woodcut was prepared from this photograph and, because of the similarity of the locomotives, Smiles and the publisher put this in instead, but incorrectly captioned. “Following this publication error, it was assumed by a number of authors that the locomotive had been transferred from Springwell to Killingworth, and this mistake was perpetuated by other authors over the years and inherited by the SRM.”
Of course, the ‘Billy’ that was displayed in Newcastle in 1881 and shipped to America two years later, little resembles the locomotive that emerged from the West Moor workshops in 1816. Dr Bailey believes that ‘Billy’ “has been rebuilt on five or six occasions during its working life”, but these very modifications have provided evidence that the 0-4-0 hails from 1816, not 1826. Dr Bailey says: “There are no discernible components dating from 1816. Like ‘Trigger’s Broom’, ‘Billy’ has been rebuilt several times, leaving evidence of major replacements from which we could determine when modifications took place and their sequence. ‘Billy’ has, however, left two ‘footprints’ for us to use as evidence. The first is the gauge. The second is the wheelbase. Stephenson’s later locomotives had a longer wheelbase, so ‘Billy’s’ 6ft 4in wheelbase identifies it as being built in 1816 rather than in the later years.”
The actual details of these modifications won’t be made public until the research has been ratified at the next International Early Railways Conference in 2021 because, says Dr Bailey, “There have been so many erroneous facts about ‘Billy’ before, I don’t wish to create any more!”
Despite the changes, ‘Billy’ is still fundamentally a Stephenson locomotive. “The basic arrangement of two cylinders, sunk into the top of the boiler, driving the wheel cranks through transverse cross-heads, has remained much the same throughout its working life,” says Dr Bailey. “It’s a remarkably robust arrangement, particularly for coping with the track deformities prevalent in those early years, and it features admirable workmanship.”
It is likely that, while more findings about ‘Billy’s’ history, construction and use are still to be published, we will never know the full story of this fascinating locomotive. The recent archaeological survey has finally given it the status it deserves, and hopefully more attention will be paid to what has hitherto been an overlooked and somewhat forgotten engine.
But what about paying the ultimate tribute? Could this locomotive, whose design was so robust that it carried on working for 65 years after it was built, ever return to steam?
Dr Bailey says: “‘Billy’ is in remarkably good condition, but I would never sanction it being returned to steam! You would have to replace so many components to meet modern health and safety requirements that you would finish up with a replica…
“Now there’s an idea!”
THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY ERRONEOUS FACTS ABOUT ‘BILLY’ BEFORE, I DON’T WISH TO CREATE ANY MORE! DR MICHAEL BAILEY MBE