The rails, sleepers and wheels, all of wood, came mostly from Sussex or Hampshire, and the writer of an article on the Tyne railways, published in the "Commercial and Agricultural Magazine" for October, 1800, speaks of the use on them of so much timber as "the more extraordinary" because the necessities of the coal mines had previously "used up every stick of timber in the neighbourhood," so that "the import from returning colliers (coal-ships) was the sole resource." Such import, also, would appear to have been considerable, the making of wooden rail-ways on the north-east coast being the means of developing an important industry in rails and wheels in the southern counties. One of the importers on the Tyne was William Scott, father of Lords Stowell and Eldon, and his "Letters," included in M. A. Richardson's "Reprints of Rare Tracts" (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1849), give some interesting details on the subject. Scott, in addition to being himself engaged in mining, acted as agent for southern producers of wooden rails and {200}wheels for colliery rail-ways; and his letters show that in and about the year 1745 the consignments were coming to hand in "immense quantities." Scott seems to have had great trouble in restraining the zeal of the southerners. He tells one correspondent that "Wheels are at present a great drug from so many yt. came last year. Rails will be wanted, but the people pays so badly for them that wo^d weary eny body to serve them." To another he says: "I find the best oak rails will scarcely give 6d. p yd this year." To correspondents at Lyndhurst, New Forest, he writes: "I fancy the dealers in wn. wheels will expect to have wheels soon 'em given, if such great numbers continue coming." Mr West, of Slyndon, near Arundel, Sussex, is told that not more than five shillings can be got for the best wooden wheels, and that "dealers are so full that they have not room for any wheels." On March 27, 1747, Scott writes concerning wheels: "No less than about 2000 com'd within these 14 days from Lyndhurst consign'd to different people"; and two months later he announces that he has resolved to receive "no more such goods as wooden wheels, rails and such like from anybody." Most of the Tyne collieries were at a higher level than the river, and in the construction of the rail-ways it was sought to obtain a regular and easy descent, regardless of route or distance, to the "staith," or shipping-stage, from which the coal would be loaded either into the keels (barges) employed to take it along the river to the colliers, or, in the case of longer distance rail-ways, direct into the collier itself, the bottom of the waggons being made after the fashion of a trap-door to facilitate discharge. Gradual descent was further aimed at because it allowed of the loaded waggons moving along the rail-way by reason of their own weight.