Museum commemorating George and Robert Stephenson
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Stephenson Railway Museum, Middle Engine Lane, North Shields, NE29 8DX
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The Stephenson Railway Museum was opened in 1986 to house the railway collections of Tyne & Wear Museums. Its name commemorates George and Robert Stephenson, the great steam railway pioneers.
George Stephenson lived locally from 1802 until 1823 and Robert was born in 1803. Some of the exhibits are from the collection formed in the 1930s at the former Museum of Science and Industry in Newcastle, one of the earliest museums of its kind outside London. It includes George Stephenson's Billy, a forerunner of The Rocket - Billy was built in 1826 and it last ran under its own power in 1881 to mark the centenary of George Stephenson's birth. The locomotive began life as a development of Stephenson's 'Killingworth Travelling Engine', and was probably the first commercially successful form of locomotive. Billy's daily task was to haul wagons of coal to the shipping staiths on the River Tyne.
Exhibits also focus on how electricity revolutionised transport in the early 1900s with an interactive multimedia display of the Harton Electric Railway and one of the nine electric trains supplied by Siemens between 1907 and 1913 to the Harton Coal Company of South Shields which operated collieries in South Tyneside at Harton, St Hilda, Boldon, Whitburn and Westoe. The locomotive is kept in full working order.
The Museum is also the northern terminus and maintenance workshop for the North Tyneside Railway. The railway operates mainly on summer weekends to and from Percy Main on the Tyne & Wear Metro system using steam locomotives to haul most trains. There are displays and exhibits which both illustrate the vital part railways have played in the region's history and also show how they continue to be relevant to today's transport needs.
By road: Off A19 near the A1058 junction
By rail: Percy Main Metro station is approx 2 km from the museum

Davies, Hunter, George Stephenson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ISBN 0297769340 (1975)
Davies, Hunter, George Stephenson: The Remarkable Life of the Founder of Railways,Sutton Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7509-3795-5 (2004)
Herring, Peter, Fifty Famous British Locomotives: The Story of the Stars of the Steam and Early Diesel Age, David & Charles, ISBN-10: 0715333437 (2009)
Rolt, L.T.C., George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution,Penguin, ISBN-10: 0140076468 (1988)
Ross, David, George and Robert Stephenson: A Passion for Success, The History Press, ISBN-10: 0752452770 (2010)
Semmens, P. W. B. & Goldfinch, A. J., How Steam Locomotives Really Work, Oxford University Press, ISBN-10: 0198607822 (2004)
Simmons, Jack & Biddle, Gordon,The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192116975 (1997)
Smiles, Samuel (1857) The Life of George Stephenson, BiblioBazaar, ISBN-10: 0559178093 (2008)
Wolmar, Christian, Blood, Iron and Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World, Atlantic Books, ISBN-10: 1848871716 (2010)
Wolmar, Christian, Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain, Atlantic Books, ISBN-10: 1843546302 (2008)
24 Hour Museum- Stephenson Railway Museum
North Tyneside Steam Railway Association
Rainhill History - Rainhill Parish Council
Stephenson Railway Museum - 'A heritage Railway for the 21st Century'