Some thirty years ago it was almost as difficult a matter to reach Shields from Newcastle as it was to reach Margate from London; but now all this changed. First came steam-boats, and then a railway. At present the railway carries the day; though the fare by water is only 6d., the locomotives have almost driven the steamers off the course. Having given our custom to the boats in going down, we thought it but fair to countenance the railway in going up [The River Tyne]. Distance eight miles - time twenty minutes - fare 9d.; the thing was well done. I never was on a railway which pleased me to much as this. The line proceeds over a flat tract of land, through the midst of villages inhabited by colliers employed in the pits, and crosses by lofty bridges, two deep ravines with rivulets tributary to the Tyne. All the rails are firmly screwed upon blocks of wood, longitudinally, and bound together like a frame-work, at the distance of every twelve feet or thereabouts. By these means the rails rest throughout their entire length on a uniformly level basis, by which all jolting and lateral motion are avoided. After trying all the principal railways in England, as well as several in other countries, I have found none on which the motion is so easy and smooth as that between Newcastle and Shields; and I can ascribe this to no other circumstance than the mode of laying the rails on longitudinal bars of timber. In proceeding along the line from Shields, the train passes at the distance of about half-way the church and village of Wallsend, with the colliery of the same name. This place marks the terminating point for the Roman wall of the Tyne The various other villages which are rapidly shot past, most consist of brick and tiled dwelling-houses of a humble order, for colliers and their families; but all, as was mentioned to me, are clean and comfortable to no inconsiderable degree, and each, as I observed, was furnished with a pig-house behind, the use of pork or bacon being universal in this part of the country.
Extract from the Port of Tyne Pilot - 15/8/1840
