Britain's railways were once the envy of the world.
You could get a train from almost anywhere...
..to almost anywhere else!
They were the network that supported an industrial superpower.
Here we go!
Whoa!
I've never seen anything like that!
But today...
..4,000 stations and 8,000 miles of track lie silent.
This station feels truly lost!
So I'm setting off to discover more of Britain's lost railways.
Wow!
This is something else!
'They tell a story
'of how we once lived...'
Oh, I love that!
'..and how we once worked.'
This is one heck of a piece of engineering!
'And they help reveal how our world has changed today.'
This is fantastic fun!
This time, I've come to the North East
in search of a very important railway story.
In fact, it's the story of the very first railways.
I'm going back to a time when there were no main lines.
No branch lines.
And certainly no undergrounds!
In the early 1800s,
modern railways were born here
in the industrial heartlands of the North East.
And there's nowhere better to see them from
than up here!
This is the extremely grand Penshaw Monument.
It has this commanding position
looking out over what was once serious coal country.
And it was coal that kick-started the railway age.
I'm going to be plotting a path across what was once all of County Durham.
From Sunderland's industrial origins,
I'll follow the world's first railway
designed for steam locomotives.
It led to some of the richest collieries in the region.
Where I'll pick up another lost coal line,
heading downhill to Hartlepool,
the medieval fishing port that reinvented itself for the new age.
But little more than 50 years ago,
from the Tyne Valley, way over there in the north,
round to these hills over here,
all of this was the Durham coalfields.
There would have been collieries everywhere.
These collieries relied on their railways.
But at first, railways were very simple affairs.
Horse-drawn wagons on wooden rails.
Coal would be pulled to the banks of the River Wear,
loaded onto small keelboats
and sailed downstream.
But if larger amounts of coal could be taken straight to the river mouth,
the industry would take off.
And the sheer size of modern Sunderland
is proof that this goal was achieved.
'In the heart of the industrial city...'
Stuart, hello! Hello!
'I'm meeting Dr Stuart Howard from Sunderland University.'
Quite a great spot up here, isn't it, looking out? Yes.
And a historic view.
Paint me a picture of what this scene here would have looked like,
I don't know, a hundred-odd years ago.
So this would have been a bustling scene,
a clanking, banging, smoky, dangerous place
with industries cheek by jowl.
'As recently as the early 1700s,
'Sunderland had been just a small Wear-side parish.
'A century later,
'it became a humming centre of ship-building, glass-making
'and salt production.
'And underpinning it all was the shipping of coal
'to all parts of the country.'
I've got a photograph here. This will give us an impression
of what the area would have looked like...
Is this here? That's there.
Ho-ho-ho-ho!
So all of this industrial...
All of these railway lines coming right up to the river mouth here,
all these ships waiting to be loaded up,
that's... That's incredible!
That's an incredible amount of industrialisation going on there.
It gives you a sense of scale.
If you take this pit over here, it was employing in 1850...
Hang on. There was a pit over here?
Where the Stadium of Light is...
Yeah? ..is Wearmouth Pit.
Right here? Yeah! Right here, almost in Sunderland itself. Yes.
'Sunderland's famous football ground
'marks where deep shafts once accessed seams of coal
'that were followed for over three miles underground.'
It was working until 1993. It was closed in 1993.
It was by that time open to the North Sea
which is just over here.
'But most of the colliery sites were several miles from the river mouth.
'They only worked because of the railways.'
Railways shrank the coalfield. So you could go further and further away from the rivers
and still get your coal to port
relatively easily.
That's what we see in this photo here, isn't it? Yeah.
You've got it all there.
So the railways we enjoy today, that all stems not from passenger railways,
but from industrial railways that were there to move goods, to move coal, was it?
That's right. They stem from mineral lines which were where you're making the coal industry efficient.
'The breakthrough came in 1820
'when one coal company set its sights on a patch of land
'six miles south of here in Hetton.'
The Hetton Coal Company, being a modern company,
developed the most modern railway that it possibly could
to take the line from Hetton inland to the river.
It did so by employing locomotives,
that is, steam engines mounted on wagons that would drive themselves.
So this was new at the time.
Was this the very first railway built specifically for steam locomotives? Yeah.
This is the cutting edge. This is the new form of economic activity
which is going to raise up a stupendous form of modern industry.
'And the new line that ended right beneath us here
'was designed by the father of the railways,
'George Stephenson.'
It's Stephenson's first project. It's the major project that gets him known.
And from there, he never looks back.
I bet. Cos how successful was the Hetton railway?
The Hetton railway was very successful.
It was a step forward, it was a step up.
It brought railways to a new level.
And, of course, it hands them two very, very important and developing industries
which were going to fuel the Industrial Revolution.
But this is incredibly exciting for me, then, Stuart.
This is the realisation that railways,
as we know them today, as we've known them over the last 150-odd years,
all started right here!
Yes. It's massively important.
Not just in the North East
but in the UK and eventually in the world.
'The line that Stephenson started
'served the region's coalmines for 137 years.
'But here, where the railway came to an end,
'you'd struggle to spot that.'
It's quite hard to imagine that this quiet riverside park
was ever a scene of such heavy industry.
I've got this photo here
and it was taken from somewhere around here.
Look, you've got this loco here.
Another one shunting these coal wagons around.
Look at the number of lines there are, the number of sidings.
Look at these tunnels in the back here.
These would have allowed the Hetton line and other lines
to bring the coal through the surrounding high ground
as close to the river as possible.
And I'm told that the tunnels themselves still survive.
If you're prepared to look!
Yeah, there's little things that stick out.
First of all, do you see a little bit of brickwork back there?
Yes! Look at this. Here we go!
That's what I was looking for. Entrance to these tunnels.
Unsurprisingly, they're shut off here, now.
Look at the cuttings down here, how steep this is!
Ha, ha, ha!
So, I believe that this tunnel mouth here on the right
is the opening for the Hetton railway.
And you can see
these weren't the kind of tunnels that would have allowed
what you might think of big, passenger steam locomotives coming through.
These were quite a bit smaller.
These were industrial lines, remember,
entirely for the transportation of coal.
That's so lovely to see them all still intact.
So beautifully, as well, with all the brick and stonework.
There's absolutely no chance of me getting any further
along the Hetton line this way, though. That is firmly locked and bolted.
That's all right. I'll turn back.
I'll find another way!
'Coming up...
WHISTLE BLOWS
'..I go back in time to the 1820s.'
All the mechanics of this are right on show.
And I hear about the end of the great coal industry.
Heartbreaking, really, when a colliery closes.
For almost 150 years,
the Durham coalfields dominated life in a large part of the North East.
But importantly for me today,
it was these coalfields that gave us our very first railways.
I'm following one old line that rattled through the back streets of Sunderland
until 1959.
Not just any railway, mind. This was the Hetton railway,
designed by the great George Stephenson.
Here, in his native North East,
Stephenson laid out a revolutionary eight-mile transport system.
A railway for steam locomotives.
The Hetton railway opened in 1822,
three years before his more famous Stockton and Darlington line.
That line carried the odd passenger.
This line moved nothing but coal
and today is largely forgotten.
But two and a half miles from the River Wear,
there's a surprising legacy.
I'm told this open green space all around me here
covers almost 150 acres.
Now, bizarrely, the only reason this area was saved
from the growth of Sunderland and its urban sprawl
was because of heavy industry.
This entire site was once Silksworth Colliery.
Silksworth employed 2,000 people
and produced 2,500 tonnes of coal a day.
It opened almost 50 years after Stephenson's great railway,
but quickly made use of the line, adding a mass of new sidings.
Silksworth Colliery pit head used to be right here,
with all its machinery and infrastructure.
I'm not sure whether I feel sad about the fact that that's clearly gone now
or to celebrate this regeneration of the area.
Either way, there's something altogether very different here now!
There's a beautiful urban park.
There's an athletics track
and football pitches.
And something far more unexpected.
Worrying me today, it's a dry ski slope!
The colliery that closed in 1971
now boasts the North East's only ski centre.
And at the top, I've arranged to meet its manager,
John Greenwood.
Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. You, too.
This is not necessarily what you expect... It's not. ..to find around here!
A dry ski slope! Exactly.
Here on the outskirts of Sunderland.
There's all these little hills everywhere. Yeah.
And that's not natural, is it?
It's not natural, no. This would have been a spoil heap.
And over the years, it was developed into a sports complex.
Do you think people realise they're skiing on top of an old pit spoil heap?
Very few. Very few. I think they just assume it's always been some sort of ski slope.
I don't think they understand what the history was.
Yeah, cos it's all beautifully green, now. Fantastic.
But going back, a completely different site.
Oh, yeah. I mean it probably would have been a quite desolate, barren sort of area.
Probably a bit smelly. Not a particularly great place to hang around.
We have photographs of it actually under construction,
where they're putting in the groundworks and the foundations of the actual slope itself.
Yeah, OK. You can see the lift is in place.
So there's some ground being moved here. There is a bit of earthworks, but...
That's right. Not massively. More kind of contouring the slope to make it sort of usable.
Because the earth was here. It was piled up. Exactly, yeah.
And then we have some photographs of the last part that you can kind of see from the colliery,
which is the old water tower.
The grey, round building at the bottom of the slope.
So originally, that was the water tower for the pit
and about ten years ago, we chopped the top off.
Basically it was getting a bit old
and bits were starting to fall down
so to make it safe, we took the top off. But originally,
that was used for issuing the skis and the equipment to the skiers.
Was it? Before we had an actual building to kind of serve from.
Yes.
It's funny that basically up here
the whole history's almost just been... Almost. ..wiped out. Almost.
I'll tell you what, though.
It's left us with something quite exciting behind us here!
Yes, very exciting, yeah. Any tips?
I think we'll just try and go as quick as we can! OK. That sounds good to me!
OK. Let's go.
Ooh!
Let's do it. Are you ready? Yeah. Let's go. I'll follow you.
Come on! Yeah!
Oh, this is awesome, John!
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Wo-ho-ho! That almost got me!
Oh, ha-ha-ha!
Yeah, lovely!
That's really fun!
That was really fun!
That's the first time I've ever skied on a spoil heap from a coal pit!
Sounds quite odd to say!
From Silksworth,
the Hetton railway continued through what's now the outskirts of Sunderland.
But this was the point where it ran into much hillier ground.
The problem was the Hetton colliery,
that Stephenson's railway was intended to serve
wasn't conveniently close to the river like Silksworth.
It was much further south
and on the far side of some rather challenging terrain.
In places, the gradient that had to be tackled
averaged 1 in 22.
Far too steep for a modern train,
let alone one built in 1822.
Stephenson had a solution, though.
And he needed it most to get his railway over Warden Law,
a peak of 600 feet.
Well, that's a decent climb.
Up the top here, now.
There's a fantastic view out over where I've just come from.
Look, that's Sunderland, off over there.
Quite easily make out the Stadium of Light, there.
Oh, yeah. Over this way, as well, look.
That's Penshaw Monument over there.
But I'm even higher up here than that.
In no normal world would you bring a railway up here.
But in 1820, rich new seams of coal were being found
underneath these very hills.
So Stephenson's trick was to swap moving steam engines
for static steam engines.
This was how he could pull heavy trains of coal
to the top of Warden Law.
Well, somewhere...here...
is where this, the Warden Law winding engine was positioned.
I've had a good mooch around.
I'll be damned if I can find any trace of it whatsoever!
But we do know how the Warden Law system worked.
That's more like it!
Got a much better view of the surrounding landscape from here.
Now, Stephenson's plan to conquer these local hills
was to let gravity do as much of the work as possible.
The coal was coming from the collieries around Hetton,
which is just over there.
So the winding engine, that was back there,
would pull that heavy coal up to this point.
But then from here over to Sunderland,
was pretty much downhill,
so those heavy wagons could be left to roll down those hills.
With a bit of braking to control them, of course.
But Stephenson's line was cleverer than that.
As the weight of those heavy wagons rolled down,
that was used to pull the lighter, empty wagons returning from Sunderland back up to the top.
Very simple, but very effective.
The line was a master class in engineering.
But also patience.
In less than eight miles,
a train of coal would be handled by three locomotives,
two static winding engines
and five gravity inclines.
And when the Hetton railway opened in 1822,
the news travelled across the world.
Engineers from Germany and America came to see it in action.
But whilst the railway and mining have gone,
the community they created certainly hasn't.
Hetton is a town built on the coal industry.
Here you go, look.
Bob Paisley was a Hetton lad.
And for those of you not too fussed about football,
Bob Paisley was one of the all-time great managers of the game.
He led Liverpool to three European Cups
as the plaque here shows.
Not even Sir Alex Ferguson enjoyed that kind of success in Europe.
Paisley worked in the local mine from the age of 14
before he was signed by Liverpool in 1939.
'Someone who didn't leave Hetton, though,
'is former mine manager, Harold Watson.'
Nice to meet you. You used to live round here, did you?
In the first house, just below the bungalow.
Number 73, there? 73.
'Living here, Harold was just 50 yards from the Hetton railway
'as it made its way through town
'to the colliery where he worked.'
This was the location of the crossing.
The gates for the crossing here.
This is a photograph taken in the early 1900s. OK!
So that's the railway coming through there, is it?
Yes. We're actually on the line now. Yeah!
'By the time trains reached here,
'they were less than a mile from the southernmost point
'of the Hetton railway.
'Elemore Colliery was Harold's place of work for six years.'
Wow!
Your old place of work is now a golf course! Yes.
There's this glaring little relic here.
This is only really the last remains of... The link of evidence, isn't it? That's right.
This is one of the original wooden trucks.
That could be 200 years old.
This is a photo of Elemore Colliery? Elemore Colliery, yes.
So where was this pit head?
The trees have been built on the site of the colliery now
across behind us here. Yeah.
The trees have all been planted since then, since the colliery closed.
There's none of this there then, is there?
No, that was all demolished.
So this is a very different picture, then...
Yes. ..to how you remember it when you worked here. That's right.
How do you look back on those days,
being down underground, working down there? It was hard work, yes.
And difficult, arduous conditions.
Particularly at Elemore, because some of the seams at Elemore were only 18 inches.
Half a metre.
18 inches wide? No.
High. High?
Goodness me.
What was the camaraderie like?
Oh, really good.
You were always responsible, you know, as a workman,
for the man that was working with you, for his life, as well.
Yes. The men you were working with, you looked after each other.
'Demand for coal across the country dropped dramatically during the '60s.
'Ironically because its biggest customer, the railways,
'moved from steam to diesel and electric power.'
When did Elemore Colliery close?
On the 1st of February, 1974.
I have a photograph here of the last shift coming out of the mine.
To a man here, they all seem to be smiling
as they're coming out of the pit there.
Well, I think they're probably smiling for the camera.
Cos they were getting their photograph taken!
But it made a hole in the village, the employment in the village, really.
It's always difficult, you know?
Yes. Heart-rending, really, when the colliery closes.
'Coming up, I visit a colliery pit head.'
All these wagons here.
'See the steam power that drove it.'
This is big machinery, isn't it?
'And I find out what happened when locomotives and horses met head on!'
They literally fought each other as to which one should go back!
Here in the North East, I've been investigating a very early rail network.
One built not for passengers,
but for coal.
Trouble is, it's proving difficult to find much evidence
of the coal or the railways.
But not here!
I've travelled ten miles west from the Hetton colliery railway
to a place where you can still feel what the North East coal industry was like.
Two whistles, is it, Ian? Two whistles.
WHISTLES
Beamish is a unique museum
where this region's industrial history lives on.
This is their recreation of an 1820s railway.
Away we go!
This is about as close as you can get
to the early steam locos working on those coal railways.
It definitely is, yes.
These locomotives were designed to pull coal. They never actually pulled passengers.
Passenger railways didn't start until 1825.
But this locomotive is a replica of one built in 1813
for a colliery near Newcastle.
It's very simple, very straightforward.
You can see exactly what you're doing, what you get.
You can see the pump working down there.
You can see the crank turning round.
You can see the pistons going up and down.
I love everything here. It's just... All the mechanics of this are right on show, aren't they?
'This engine was first used on rails designed for horse-drawn wagons.
'Those rails promptly broke.'
Obviously very, very early days.
First steam engines, first wagon wheel engines,
were all of this pattern with upright cylinders,
blacksmith engineering with low tolerances,
which meant that the pressure that you had couldn't be high.
OK. Hence the speed wasn't high, either. OK.
Those later locos were being put together by dedicated railway engineers who had the knowledge.
But these are some of the first. Right.
'35 years after this loco's introduction,
'Britain boasted over 4,000 miles of railway track.
'But at this point, it was all about shifting that coal.'
How many wagons could a locomotive like this
typically pull full of coal?
It depends very much on the actual spec of the wagon,
the gradient it's going up.
But 15, 20, would be typical, would be average.
Whereas a horse could typically pull one laden wagon.
So what kind of speeds might we be going here?
Three, four, five mile an hour.
Marginally faster than the horse-drawn traffic that they were replacing.
The difference, of course, was that these could run all day.
And the coal industry never looked back.
From seven million tonnes in 1825,
County Durham boomed,
and 90 years later
was turning out 56 million tonnes of coal a year
from over 300 different mines.
This is Beamish's replica pit village.
So here, along with the accompanying pit workings nearby,
is all set up to represent 1913.
So we're at the advent of the First World War.
But more specifically, 1913 was the year that the Durham coalfields
reached their peak output.
And brilliantly...
..this actual row of cottages along here
once stood, exactly as they are now,
but in Hetton, where I've just been.
They were painstakingly dismantled,
brought here and then rebuilt.
They're actually very quaint!
Cottages like this
were built by the coal companies
to house workers and their families.
And by 1913, those companies had also built
ever more elaborate railways.
This is Beamish's colliery railway.
And it's typical to what many of the collieries would have had around these parts.
All these wagons here either full of coal
or waiting to be filled up with coal,
shunted around the yard by giant steam locos.
But to see how the whole process worked,
it's best to start at the beginning with the pit head itself.
Rob. How you doing? Hi. Nice to see you.
'North East rail historian Rob Langham is going to show me
'how the coal ever made it to the wagons outside.'
Yes!
Ha-ha-ha! Yes!
Oh, look at all this!
Rob, this is amazing! It is, isn't it?
Big machinery. Yeah, absolutely.
This is a pit head winding engine. Yes.
So this particular engine itself dates back to 1855.
It's typical of those used around the Durham coalfield and the wider great northern coalfieldas a whole
for powering the collieries.
Static steam engines like this were the heartbeat of each colliery.
In the late 1800s,
this particular engine was pulling 700 tonnes of coal a day
up to the surface.
The cages themselves were going up and down, two of them together,
up and down the shaft vertically.
So similar to a lift system today in a modern office building,
but powered by steam instead.
Once on the surface, the coal was dropped onto conveyors
also powered by the winding engine.
And there's men filtering the coal out,
making sure there's no stones in it,
anything that's rubbish, basically very small bits of coal
that aren't worth anything to be sold.
All being filtered out and then it's being dropped directly into the coal wagons beneath
and then taken off to wherever it needs to be.
So this is about moving the coal from down in the ground where we've got it to where we wantit to be
but also it's used to get men down into the pit and bring them back up after the shift. Yes.
Take them down for shifts. Anything that's gonna be needed below or needs to come up from below
is all coming up thanks to this engine.
Pit head engines worked round the clock,
transporting men down shafts over 1,000 feet deep.
Do you know how many winding engines like this
there would have been across the Durham coalfields?
Hundreds of them. Certainly at least around 300 to 400 or so, depending.
Some pits had more than one winding engine, as well, so there'd be duplicates.
But these would be in the hundredfold all across the county.
Wow.
It's beautiful, Rob. It's beautiful!
'And once the winding engine had played its part,
'it was over to the railways.'
You have these coal wagons down here. They'd be shunted by a small engine.
You can see one outside the shed and one in the shed, as well.
These wagons would be shunted one at a time under the screens.
Four tonnes of coal directly into the coal wagons.
The steam engines are shunting it around.
So locomotives in a colliery railway like this
are only gonna be shunting these wagons back and forth, really, are they?
Not really any great distance. No, not a huge distance,
but all these wagons would be individually positioned
underneath the screens to get fully loaded
and these small engines would marshal a few at a time, get them loaded,
take them round, a few hundred yards round the back of the pit cottages there.
Marshal together a much longer train. Maybe 20, 30, even more coal wagons
and then a much bigger, much more powerful engine belonging to a mainline company,
which would have a junction with the colliery itself,
would then take them off, normally down to the coast or to the river
where the coal then would be loaded onto a ship and sent off down to London.
So what we've got here, then,
would have been replicated right across the landscape, would it?
Absolutely all over the North East.
The railway was absolutely vital for getting the coal to where it needed to be.
And how those railways spread!
Stephenson's Hetton railway
opened in 1822.
But within decades,
the County Durham rail network
was staggering.
A confusing mass of short routes
built to serve the needs of the collieries.
And I'm picking up one of Stephenson's later projects,
a line starting very close to the Hetton collieries,
but this time, heading south.
This old line's nice and easy to follow.
It's part of the national cycle network, these days.
But it opened as a railway in 1835,
that's 13 years after the breakthrough Hetton line.
And it ran for 12 miles, down to Hartlepool,
to the mouth of the river Tees.
The plan with this new line
was to give Hartlepool a slice of the very lucrative coal business.
But it appears this railway managed to carry more than just coal.
Hello!
Nice to meet you. Yes, and you.
'To find out more, I'm meeting Tees archaeologist Robin Daniels.'
I understand you've got some archives, some relics of the railway to show me.
We have, yes. We've got some printed ephemera here.
'Robin's brought along a stash of material
'made by a Victorian printer in Hartlepool working for the railway line I'm following.'
This is a proof for the tickets for the railway
and they look very different to the tickets we have today.
You can see it's just printed on paper
and then the ticket agent would just write out the date of the ticket
and he would put the price of it on.
It shows the railway, Haswell to Hartlepool,
but the other interesting thing is that is says "outside".
And we have another sheet here
which says, "inside". OK.
And again this takes us back to the really early days of the railway
when people were actually sitting inside carriages and outside carriages.
So this has come from a printing house, you say? That's right.
In the 1960s, when the company closed,
a local historian went through all their collections
and collected together a lot of material that would have been lost, otherwise.
And so how far back does this go, then? What's this...
I think the earliest piece in here is about 1839
and then it goes right the way through to about 1859.
This is really early. This is probably the earliest railway stuff we've got
in the whole of the country, if not the world.
It's a huge insight into those early days in railways. Goodness me.
That must have been a real treasure trove, then, to discover something like that! Absolutely, yes.
So if we're talking about 1840-something... Yep. ..here,
this line, Haswell to Hartlepool was being used by passengers,
not purely coal.
Yeah, absolutely. It was built as a coal line, as most were in this area,
but very early on, people started to use it.
But the company wasn't really interested in people.
It was interested in coal.
So what it did is it licensed the carriage of passengers
to basically local carriers.
And they got a horse, they got basically a stagecoach,
put it on the track and started going up and down the track
operating whatever schedule they wanted to use.
It's a single track line with passing places
and therefore if you come face to face between those passing places,
somebody has got to go back.
And they literally just stood up and fought each other which one should go back!
It's a different world, isn't it? It is, a very different world!
'But as the potential of human passengers became clear,
'the railway company took control themselves
'and their posters begin to look quite familiar!'
There it is. "An alteration of coach fares." Basically, they were putting the prices up. Absolutely.
That's what we get every year! Every January!
But it's a lovely item.
Nicely printed in different-coloured inks.
And it's got this beautiful block along the top,
showing a train more or less of the period.
'And from there, the next stop was to offer punters fun days out.'
This shows cheap trips to Castle Eden Horticultural Show.
So it does give us a great insight into what the railway was being used for by passengers.
It's almost even the development of the tourist industry in the area
when they're realising that people will pay money to go to these special events. Yes.
What a wonderful collection, Robin. Absolutely.
As we know today, most of our railways are used mainly for passengers
whereas at the beginning it was very much an afterthought which develops and develops.
Coming up... Life was now all about coal.
I reach the ancient fishing port of Hartlepool.
And meet the man who turned the place on its head.
He wants everything. He's the super entrepreneur of the Victorian period.
I'm reaching the end of my journey
through the revolutionary mining railways of the North East.
The Durham coalfields and their railways
turned Sunderland into an industrial giant.
But at the other end of my route,
what impact would they make
to the ancient port of Hartlepool?
The answer was a whole new Hartlepool.
For centuries, Hartlepool had enjoyed life as a fishing town
and as the official port
for the ancient cathedral city of Durham.
But that didn't count for much
when life was now all about coal
and how to transport it.
As the success of my lost railway into Hartlepool became clear,
the town set out on an outrageous journey of its own.
'I'm meeting curator Mark Simmons of the Hartlepool museum.'
It's a perfect day for it, Mark.
So what are we actually looking out over here, then?
So we're looking at Jackson Dock
which was opened in 1852.
This is its opening day.
So quite a big event, then.
All these people out, these are spectators, are they?
Yeah, thousands and thousands of spectators all around the dock,
lined up watching a parade of ships.
Why was this such a big event, then?
If we were to go back, say, to the 1830s, before the railway was built,
we'd be looking at fields, we'd be looking at a marshy salt lake.
There'd be nothing here apart from sand dunes and rabbits.
West Hartlepool, as it was called,
didn't even exist until 1854.
But for a century, its development was phenomenal.
We can look at it at its height.
This is a map of 1951.
Oh, wow! It's incredible, isn't it?
This is... Well, Mark, tell you what. When you opened this up,
I'll tell you what strikes me straightaway.
The amount of lines on here, showing all the railway sidings,
it's an explosion of rail activity!
'In the early 1950s,
'West Hartlepool and its docks looked like this.'
Steel coming up from the steelworks at Seaton Carew
and coming up from Middlesbrough,
things coming from County Durham,
bringing in goods from all over northern Europe.
It's incredible. This is amazing.
Look at the junction. The number of lines. Look at all this around here!
Who built this? Who was responsible for all this?
There's one man, really, responsible for the harbours and for building West Hartlepool,
and that's Ralph Ward Jackson.
It's not somebody, I think anybody, outside of the North East has really heard of.
But at one point, he's the most powerful man in the north of England.
Right, now you've got my intrigue! So who is this chap?
He's born in North Yorkshire, he's an aristocratic, land-owning background.
But he sees the opportunity to make money from the railways.
But in the early part of the 1840s,
he falls out with the railway company
and decides that he can do it, more or less on his own.
'Jackson set up his own company,
'bought plenty of land, and set about creating a modern dock system
'for the railway age.'
So this is a hugely ambitious and quite risky move, isn't it? Yes.
That dock there took two years to build.
8,000 workers.
And they shift two and a half million tonnes of stone.
That's the same amount of stone that's in the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Goodness me! And they did all of that in just two years? Just two years, yes.
'This particular dock was named after the man himself.
'Jackson Dock.
'But there were several others, too.'
You're talking, ooh, five to six million tonnes of coal
coming just through the West Dock.
In about 15 years, they go from absolutely nothing
to being the fourth biggest port in the country.
'And to ensure the port was always busy,
'Jackson was involved in the railways that fed the port
'and the collieries that fed the railways.'
He realises that it's not just enough to own a dock or to own a railway
or to own the engines.
He wants everything.
He owns the banks, the solicitors, the church.
He owns most of the houses that people are living in.
He's a super-entrepreneur... Yeah! ..I think, of the Victorian period.
Things didn't always run smoothly for Jackson, mind.
He lost control of his company,
went to court for financial irregularities
and was even accused of assaulting a vicar!
But when his statue was unveiled the decade after his death in 1880,
this photo speaks for itself.
But he's seen as the father of Hartlepool, of West Hartlepool.
The founder, the father figure.
The benign Victorian entrepreneur
who builds and creates.
I think he'd be quite pleased to see that here we are, still,
170 years later, talking about him. I'm sure he would!
And looking at what he was responsible for doing. I'm sure he would enjoythat.
As Jackson's Hartlepool exploded into life,
Britain as a whole was being transformed
by a rush of railway building.
But it all began here in the North East
during a great era of engineers and entrepreneurs.
And today the great docks of Hartlepool
are some of the best evidence that any of it ever happened.
But look across the docks behind me there.
You can see right back to those wind turbines,
stood on the hills where so much coal was once mined.
And it is a fascinating story.
In 150 years,
that industry exploded into life,
turned this whole region on its head
and then slowly ebbed away.
And it was the invention of the railways
that made it possible.
Next time...
Climb when ready, Rob!
..I'm in North Wales
where tiny railways have shaped...
Just look at that!
..and conquered a famous landscape.
These lines built fortunes
and even crowned princes.
This is something, isn't it?
The most impressive castle you'll ever see!
Subtitles by Red Bee Media