if
run at from ten to fourteen miles an hour, would pay very well. Thus the
Stockton and Darlington Company made a larger profit when running coal at
low speeds at a halfpenny a ton per mile, than they have been able to do
since they put on their fast passenger trains, when everything must needs
be run faster, and a much larger proportion of the gross receipts is
absorbed by working expenses."

In advocating these views, Mr. Stephenson was considerably ahead of his
time; and although he did not live to see his anticipations fully
realised as to the supply of the London coal-market, he was nevertheless
the first to point out, and to some extent to prove, the practicability
of establishing a profitable coal trade by railway between the northern
counties and the metropolis. So long, however, as the traffic was
conducted on main passenger lines at comparatively high speeds, it was
found that the expenditure on tear and wear of road and locomotive
power,--not to mention the increased risk of carrying on the first-class
passenger traffic with which it was mixed up,--necessarily left a very
small margin of profit; and hence Mr. Stephenson was in the habit of
urging the propriety of constructing a railway which should be
exclusively devoted to goods and mineral traffic run at low speeds as the
only condition on which a large railway traffic of that sort could be
profitably conducted.

Having induced some of his Liverpool friends to join him in a coal-mining
adventure at Chesterfield, a lease was taken of the Claycross estate,
then for sale, and operations were shortly after begun. At a subsequent
period Mr. Stephenson extended his coal-mining operations in the same
neighbourhood; and in 1841 he himself entered into a contract with owners
of land in adjoining townships for the working of the coal thereunder;
and pits were opened on the Tapton estate on an extensive scale. About
the same time he erected great lime-works, close to the Ambergate station
of the Midland Railway, from which, when in full operation he was able to
turn out upwards of 200 tons a day. The limestone was brought on a
tramway from the village of Crich, 2 or 3 miles distant, the coal being
supplied from his adjoining Claycross colliery. The works were on a
scale such as had not before been attempted by any private individual
engaged in a similar trade; and we believe they proved very successful.

[Picture: Lime Works at Ambergate]