Description and History of Site:-
The Coal Staithe on Kidacre Street was the terminus of the Middleton Colliery Railway, the worlds oldest continuously working railway, founded in 1758 and the first railway to obtain an Act of Parliament giving consent to construct a wagonway or railway. The colliery owner Charles Brandling had sought the Act of Parliament to ensure the route's permanence and the right to obtain wayleave, a type of transport right of way over otherwise private land.
The Staithe had originally terminated on the north side of Great Wilson Street at Casson Close, nearer Leeds Bridge. By 1813 the Staithe had been moved South, to its final position alongside Kidacre Street, because of the increasingly longer trains causing problems due to the narrow, twisting, approach into Casson Close.
When Great Wilson Street was built c1838, the Staithe viaduct lost 150' (45m) of its northern end.
The Staithe was used to transfer coal from the railway wagons onto horse drawn carts for onward distribution.
Between 1813-26 wagons were being tipped, with their load being discharged over a wooden scaffold arrangement into the yard below.
By 1826 the staithe was masonry built at 594' long (181m) with arches using 10' (3m) piers containing coal-chutes in the top of each arch. There were two tracks with c20 chutes each and a further line in between for empty wagon returns. Coal was dropped from the wagons with opening bottoms, which discharged their load through the coal-chutes between the rails, into waiting carts under the arches.
As deliveries were increased with higher demand, the staithe was supplemented with additional wooden terracing over which more rail was laid. Coal was dropped through coal-chutes in a similar way to the masonry staithe. Opening in September 1758 using horses initially pulling wagons on wooden rails, thousands of tons of coal was brought into the industrial city of Leeds from Middleton Colliery. The coal was essential to feed the many steam engines used to power Hunslet and Holbeck's many engineering manufacturers, along with other industries, contributing hugely to Leeds industrial growth.
Around 1810 John Blenkinsop, the colliery manager at Middleton, decided to introduce steam locomotives as horses were becoming expensive and hard to come by, because the army were buying up horses and fodder due to the Napoleonic wars.
However, at that time locomotives were not successful because their excess weight caused the cast iron rails to buckle and break.
Blenkinsop invented, and was granted Patent number 3431 on 10th April 1811, a rack and pinion system which allowed a lighter locomotive of five tons (5080kg) to negotiate the track into Leeds carrying a viable load.
A powered pinion wheel at one side of the locomotive connected into a rack, cast into the rail at that side, similar to a mountain railway system used today. The locomotives in this way regularly hauled 27 wagons containing around 90 tons (91,444kg) of coal into Leeds at 3.5 m.p.h (5.6 k.p.h) fully loaded, or 10 m.p.h (16.0 k.p.h) with a light load.
The toothed rail was located to one side, and not in the centre of the track, so as to still allow horses to walk the track should the locomotive fail in service, a useful design that would be utilised in 1835.
The first two of four locomotives, designed by Matthew Murray, called Salamanca and Prince Regent, were built in 1812 at the nearby Holbeck engineering works, Fenton, Murray and Wood's Round Foundry, using Blenkinsop's rack and pinion system. (See WYK01412).
These were the world's first commercially viable steam locomotives and went into regular working on 12th August 1812.
The four locomotives ran until 1835 before being replaced by horses following a boiler explosion which killed the driver, James Hewitt in February 1834, the world's first regular locomotive driver, due to a badly repaired boiler, not a failure of design or construction, maintenance standards on the railway had slipped since Blenkinsop's death in January 1831.
Steam was reintroduced in 1866 using locally made tank engines from Manning Wardle, built at the Boyne Works in nearby Jack Lane (see WYK02256). Heavier locomotives using just wheel adhesion, and no rack and pinion, could be used now with the use of stronger, wrought-iron rails, patented in 1820 by John Birkinshaw.
In 1881 the railway was converted to 4' 8 1/2'' (1435mm) Standard Gauge track allowing connection to the Midland Railway.
The Middleton Colliery became part of the National Coal Board in 1946, and on 13th September 1947 traffic from the North of Hunslet Moor Staithe was stopped, with the track sold off. The Holmes Street bridge was demolished 1st February 1948, but Kiddacre Staithe survived until 1956.

Further Reading and References:-
http://www.middletonrailway.org.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleton_Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Blenkinsop
http://www.leedsengine.info/leeds/histfmw.asp#FMW
http://www.leodis.net
A History of the Middleton Railway Leeds, The Middleton Railway Trust Museum, 8th Edition. p16, pp24-27, p34-35,p46
The Railway Foundry Leeds, Redman, Ronald Nelson. Goose & Son Norwich 1972. p4

Help us improve this entry

The compilers welcome corrections or additional information on all sites.
Any information provided will be verified before appearing on the web site.

Email comments

Key Words :- coal staithe railway steam murray locomotive rack pinion

Viewing the Site :- Public footpath along street.

Address :- Kidacre Street, Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS10 1ET
Grid Ref :- SE 30282 32790
Co-ordinates :- Lat 53.790550 , Long -1.541826
Local Authority :- Leeds Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - West Riding
Site Status :- Site demolished or no longer extant
Site Condition :- Site cleared - no above ground remains visible
Site Dates :- 1758 - c1947
Record Date :- 14 September 2018

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © Andrew Garford