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Stephenson, “I’ll give you a wide range of subjects; what shall it be about?” “Say birds’ nests!” rejoined the other, who prided himself on his special knowledge of this subject. “Then birds’ nests be it.” A long and animated conversation ensued: the bird-nesting of his boyhood, the blackbird’s nest which his father had held him up in his arms to look at when a child at Wylam, the hedges in which he had found the thrush’s and the linnet’s nests, the mossy bank where the robin built, the cleft in the branch of the young tree where the chaffinch had reared its dwelling—all rose up clear in his mind’s eye, and led him back to the scenes of his boyhood at Callerton and Dewley Burn.
Blackett was thus experimenting and building locomotives at Wylam, George Stephenson was anxiously studying the same subject at Killingworth. He was no sooner appointed engine-wright of the collieries than his attention was directed to the means of more economically hauling the coal from the pits to the river-side.
When first married, they lived at Walbottle, a village situated between Wylam and Newcastle, afterwards removing to Wylam, where Robert was employed as fireman of the old pumping engine at that colliery.
The Wylam waggon-way, one of the oldest in the North, was made of wooden rails down to 1807, and went to the shipping-place for coals on the Tyne. Each chaldron-waggon was originally drawn by a horse with a man in charge, only making two journeys in the one day and three on the following, the man being allowed sevenpence for each journey.
The tools and machinery for constructing coal-waggons and locomotives were formed with this gauge in view. The Wylam waggon-way, afterwards the Wylam plate-way, the Killingworth railroad, and the Hetton rail road, were as nearly as possible on the same gauge.
Blackett’s praiseworthy efforts thus far proved in vain. He was still, however, desirous of testing the practicability of employing locomotive power in working the coal down to Lemington, and he determined on another trial. He accordingly directed his engine-wright to proceed with the building of a third engine in the Wylam workshops.
Thay war an honest family, but sair hadden doon i’ th’ world.” Indeed, the earnings of old Robert did not amount to more than twelve shillings a week; and, as there were six children to maintain, the family, during their stay at Wylam, were necessarily in very straitened circumstances.
About the end of last century the estate of which Wylam forms part, belonged to Mr. Blackett, a gentleman of considerable celebrity in coal-mining, then more generally known as the proprietor of the ‘Globe’ newspaper. There is nothing to interest one in the village itself.
An old Wylam collier, who remembered George Stephenson’s father, thus described him:—“Geordie’s fayther war like a peer o’ deals nailed thegither, an’ a bit o’ flesh i’ th’ inside; he war as queer as Dick’s hatband—went thrice aboot, an’ wudn’t tie. His wife Mabel war a delicat’ boddie, an’ varry flighty.
Any time about the year 1786, a stranger in the streets of the grimy colliery village of Wylam, near Newcastle, might have passed by without notice a ragged, barefooted, chubby child of five years old, Geordie Stephenson by name, playing merrily in the gutter and looking to the outward eye in no way different from any of the other colliers' children who loitered about him.
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