Dating back to the 1720s and still partly in use today as the preserved Tanfield Railway, the line has a justifiable claim to be the world’s oldest railway, running on the track bed that 300 years ago was travelled over by horse-drawn coal waggons on wooden rails. In these pages the history of the Tanfield Waggonway is told, from its origins as part of a network of wooden waggonways that ran from coal pits to the River Tyne, its rebuild with iron rails and inclined planes, introduction of locomotives in the 1880s through to its closure in the early 1960s.

Lavishly illustrated throughout with rare images covering the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Rob Langham covers the fascinating pre-preservation history of the 300-year-old Tanfield Waggonway.