Taken from "Our Iron Roads", by Frederick S. Williams, and originally published in 1883.

This is the second part of Chapter One, the first part, which deals with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, is here.

Some further reference should now be made to two men whose names are identified with the rise and progress of the railway system. George Stephenson was born in a small cottage, in the village of Wylam, on the banks of the Tyne, near Newcastle. He was the son of a collier, and had early to labour for his share of the household bread. Heavy were the demands upon him. When " too young to stride across the furrow " he went to plough. Then we find him picking bats and dross from the coal-heaps, at twopence a day, and he was still so small that he often hid himself when the overseer passed, lest he shculd be thought too little to earn his wages. Shortly after he entered his teens he worked as brakesman on a tramway, and subsequently became stoker to an engine on an estate of Lord Ravensworth, often having to rise at one and two o'clock in the morning, and to work till a late hour at night. Thankful in the receipt of a wage of a shilling a day, he declared, when this amount was doubled, that he was "a man for life." He was still a stoker - but a thoughtful and observant one - showing the native ingenuity that dwelt beneath his rough exterior in the execution of some repairs that were required in the machine he tended. Yet his circumstances were far from cheering. In the year 1800 the scourge of war, with famine in its wake, was raging over Europe. Wages were low and food was dear, while the militia and the pressgang imperilled the occupation of the artisan ; and we find George Stephenson seriously thinking of the New World as a more fitting field for his labours. With a keen and painful recollection of the embarrassments of that period, he afterwards remarked to one who was well acquainted with him: " You know the road from my house at Killingworth, to such a spot. When I left home and came down that road, I wept, for I knew not where my lot would be cast."

As his prospects somewhat improved, he gave up the thought of emigration, and when he reached the age of twenty-two, he married. In 1803, his only child, Robert, was born. With increasing responsibilities the father became, if possible, still more industrious. He tried his hand at all kinds of work, and while he availed himself of every opportunity of personal improvement, he cut out clothes for the pitmen, taught the pitmen's wives, and made shoes for his poorer relatives.

Meanwhile, his powers of contrivance and invention had been developed in various ways, and had created for him what may be designated a local reputation. So decided was his ability, and so great was the confidence Lord Ravensworth and the Killingworth owners had in him, that they supplied him with money to make a locomotive, and in the month of July, 1814, it was tried on a tramway. " Yes," said Stephenson himself, in a speech which he delivered at the opening of the Newcastle and Darlington Railway, in June, 1844, "Yes, Lord Ravensworth & Co., were the first parties that would intrust me with money to make a locomotive engine. That engine was made thirty-two years ago. I said to my friends, that there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, provided the works could be made to stand. In this respect, great perfection has been reached, and, in consequence, a very high velocity has been obtained. In what has been done under my management, the merit is only in part my own. I have been most ably assisted and seconded by my son. In the earlier period of my career, and when he was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and made up my mind that he should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man ; and how do you think I managed. I betook myself to mending my neighbours' clocks and watches at night, after my daily labour was done; and thus I procured the means of educating my son. He became my assistant and my companion. He got an appointment as under-reviewer, and at night we worked together at our engineering. I got leave to go to Killingworth to lay down a railway at Hetton, and next to Darlington; and after that I went to Liverpool, to plan a line to Manchester. I there pledged myself to attain a speed of ten miles an hour. I said I had no doubt the locomotive might be made to go much faster, but we had better be moderate at the beginning. The directors said I was quite right; for if, when they went to Parliament, I talked of going at a greater rate than ten miles an hour, I would put a cross on the concern. It was not an easy task for me to keep the engine down to ten miles an hour; but it must be done, and I did my best. I had to place myself in that most unpleasant of all positions - the witness-box of a Parliamentary Committee. I could not find words to satisfy either the committee or myself. Some one inquired if I were a foreigner, and another hinted that I was mad." "I put up," he continued, "with every rebuff, and went on with my plans, determined not to be put down. Assistance gradually increased - improvements were made - and to-day, a train, which started from London in the morning, has brought me in the afternoon to my native soil, and enabled me to take my place in this room, and see around me many faces which I have great pleasure in looking upon."

George Stephenson's connection with the Liverpool and Manchester railway brought him into the front rank of the engineers of his day. He became an extensive locomotive manufacturer at Newcastle, a railway contractor, and a great colliery and iron-work owner, particularly at Clay Cross. It is recorded of him, that in reply to the inquiry of a lady, he said, in review of his past career:-" Why, madam, they used to call me George Stephenson; I am now called George Stephenson, Esquire, of Tapton House, near Chesterfield. And, further, let me say, that I have dined with princes, peers, and commoners, with persons of all classes, from the humblest to the highest. I have dined off a red-herring when seated in a hedge-bottom, and I have gone through the meanest drudgery. I have seen mankind in all its phases, and the conclusion I have arrived at is this, - that if we were all stripped, there is not much difference."

Robert Stephenson, when a lad, served for three years as a coal-viewer to Mr. Nicholas Wood; and, as better prospects opened up to his father, he attended the University of Edinburgh for a session. During that period there was not a more diligent student there. He knew the value of knowledge, applied himself earnestly to its pursuit, and learned how to teach himself. In 1822 he returned from Edinburgh, and commenced his apprenticeship to engineering, under his father, who had just established a steam-engine factory at Newcastle. But two years of laborious application to the study and practice of his profession, gave evidence, in his failing health, of the fact that he was doing too much even for his robust frame. It happened at that time that an expedition had been arranged for exploring the silver and gold mines of Venezuela, New Grenada, and Colombia, the charge of which was offered to him, and it was accepted. The change of work and of climate were the means of restoring his health, and on his way home, in 1828, he met with Mr. Trevithick, the engineer, from whom he gathered much information in reference to the mines of Cornwall, and this tended, by its application to the construction of locomotives, to his ultimate success in that department.

During the absence of Robert Stephenson from England, a new era had arisen in our railway history. The Rocket was nearly completed. The success of that engine encouraged Robert Stephenson to devote his attention to the construction of locomotives; and, by simplifying the working parts of the engine, enlarging the steam-generating capacities of the boiler, and varying the proportions of several parts of the engine, he obtained a great increase both of power and speed. The engines that issued, month by month, from the factory, were a continuous improvement on their predecessors, until the Newcastle factory became the largest and most famous in the world. As railways increased, it sent engines to all the countries of Europe, and to the United States, and it manufactured about a thousand locomotives. A writer in October, 1850, said, while speaking of the achievements of railway enterprise, especially under the auspices of Mr. Stephenson, that we then had about 5,000 miles of railway, in the construction of which 250,000,000 cubic yards, or not less than 350,000,000 tons of earth and rock had, in tunnel, embankment, and cutting, been moved.

On the completion of the London and Birmingham, the Stephensons undertook the formation of the Birmingham and Derby, North Midland, York and North Midland, Manchester and Leeds, Northern and Eastern Railways, and for ten years were incessantly engaged upon the surveys, plans, parliamentary battles, and construction of the vast network of lines stretching in all directions throughout the kingdom. During this period, Robert Stephenson, as engineer-in-chief, executed the great iron cross of roads which, on the one hand, unite London with Berwick, and on the other, Yarmouth with Holyhead, making, with the lines in connection with them, not fewer than 1,800 miles of the iron highways of the country. They also planned the construction of an extensive system of railways in Belgium, extending on the one hand from Ostend to Liege, and on the other, from Antwerp through Brussels, to be connected through Mons with Valenciennes, altogether 347 miles of railway.

In the year 1846 Robert Stephenson visited Norway to examine the country for the purpose of a railway between Christiania and the Myosen Lake; and he had honours conferred upon him, in acknowledgment of his able services, by the King of Norway and Sweden, as previously he had received distinctions from the King of Belgium.

"It was but as yesterday," said Robert Stephenson in 1850, "that he was engaged as an assistant in tracing the line of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Since that period, the Liverpool and Manchester, the London and Birmingham, and a hundred other great works, had sprung into vigorous existence. so suddenly had they been accomplished, that it appeared to him like the realization of fabled powers, or the magician's wand. Hills had been cut down, and valleys had been filled up ; and where this simple expedient was inapplicable, high and magnificent viaducts had been erected; and where mountains intervened, tunnels of unexampled magnitude had been unhesitatingly undertaken. Works had been scattered over the face of our country, bearing testimony to the indomitable enterprise of the nation, and the unrivalled skill of its artists. In referring thus to the railway works, he must refer also to the improvement of the locomotive engine. This was as remarkable as the other works were gigantic. They were, in fact, necessary, to each other. The locomotive engine, independent of the railway, would be useless. They had gone on together, and they now realized all the expectations that were entertained of them."

" Healthy-bodied and healthy-minded," said a writer in the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, " apt in emergencies, and yet of slow, and generally of sound judgment, Robert Stephenson may be regarded as the type and pattern of the onward-moving English race, practical, scientific, energetic, and, in the hour of trial, heroic. Born almost in the coal-mine, of the racy old blood of the north, with a father strong in motherwit, stern of purpose, untiring in patience, careful of his small resources, keenly conscious of the bounded sphere his want of early education had kept him in till a later period of life, and determined to pare off from himself all luxuries, all but the merest necessaries, in order that his after-coming should start fair in life with that knowledge he himself held above all price - born thus, Robert Stephenson was emphatically well-born. With natural talents, good education, a healthy frame, the rising prestige of his father's name, little money, and a large demand for original work in a working and energetic old world, he went forth to the New World, and in the mines of South America and their environs added new manners and customs to his varied stock of knowledge. More than all this, the genial spirit that ever looked kindly on his fellow-creature, with the intellect that could generally winnow the false from the true, marked him out for a leader of men. Not to his mere mechanical skill does he owe his success in life. That might have been thwarted in five hundred ways by interested rivals; but men wish not to thwart those whom they love; and probably no chief of an army was ever more beloved by his soldiers than Robert Stephenson has been by the noble army of physical workers, who under his guidance have wrought at labours of profit, - made labours of love by his earnest purpose and strength of brotherhood.""