Use as a Waggonway
There were never any horses or steam engines operating in the tunnel. There is a difference in height between the colliery site and the Quayside of 222ft which provides an average gradient of about 1 in 90, sufficient for the waggons to descend the tunnel under gravity.
As the train of waggons descended they pulled behind them a rope attached to a stationary 40hp steam engine. After the coal had been unloaded the empty waggons were pulled back up to the colliery. Initially hemp rope was used which led to several accidents. The Newcastle Chronicle of the 8 April 1843 reports a train of ten waggons running off the staith after the rope broke. Also, on the 1 November 1845 there is a report of a keel being sunk when eight waggons ran over the end of the staith. Following these incidents there was a recommendation in The Mining Journal that wire hawsers should be used.
We don't know what the waggons actually looked like; no drawings or plans have been located. However, we do know that they were low and oblong and designed by William Gilhespie, the engineer in overall charge of the tunnel, to utilise the full width of the tunnel. They were built by Hawks & Co. of Gateshead and carried a Newcastle chaldron which is equivalent to 53cwt or 2,693kg. The operation was planned to handle up to thirty-two waggons in a train with three trips per hour, should demand require it, but it's not known if this was ever achieved.
There are a number of records of accidents at the colliery including two incidents when the boiler on the stationary engine exploded, on both occasions killing a man, but we know of only one fatal accident in the tunnel. This occured on the 16 June 1852 when three men entered the tunnel to inspect it having, the previous day, sent instructions to the colliery not to send down any waggons. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, a set of waggons was sent down the tunnel resulting in the death of one of the men, William Armstrong Coulson, a staithsman.
Although we have no information about the capital cost of the project, it is recorded that the operating cost of conveying the coal through the tunnel was about 12% of the cost of taking carts through the town. So, the tunnel was a financial success but unfortunately the colliery itself wasn't. By the mid-1850s the colliery had come into the ownership of the Northumberland & Durham District Banking Co. which got into financial difficulties itself and had to cease all business, including that of the colliery in 1857. In 1859 the liquidators of the bank attempted to sell the colliery but the highest price offered did not meet the reserve and the colliery was closed completely in January of 1860 and all the equipment was disposed of by public auction.
Having taken two and half years to build, the tunnel was only operated for eighteen years.
The southern end of the tunnel was lost in the late 1870s when the Glass House Bridge was built. This bridge, which opened in 1878, linked the New Road (now City Road) and Walker Road. By that time the tunnel was disused so there was no need to build around it so the final 200-300 yards were obliterated. It was probably around this time, when the houses in the Acrum Street area of Spital Tongues were built, that the colliery end of the tunnel was filled in.
© Phil Thirkell April 2006
Page updated: April 2006
