Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Snow White to George Stephenson – the ‘prehistory of railways’.

Bob Gwynne,  Railway Historian and former National Railway Museum Curator

In ‘Rail 200′ Year this talk takes a look at the rather longer history of guided transport than that title suggests. It includes places and people important to what is a complex history and one which stretches from the Gulf of Corinth to the Newlands Valley in Cumbria, from Nottinghamshire to Northumberland. We end with the birth of George Stephenson, the man who is generally regarded as the ‘father of railways’, though he was born next to a waggonway that was already old when he was a little child.

Image:  “Puffing Billy locomotive” built in 1813/14 for Wylam Colliery, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, now in the Science Museum.  © Roger Backhouse.

2.30pm in the Tempest Anderson Lecture Theatre in the Yorkshire Museum on Tuesday 9 September.

YPS Members free, non members £5.