The "Tyne Mercury" was equally decided against railways. "What person," asked the editor (November 16th, 1824), "would ever think of _paying any thing_ to be conveyed from Hexham to Newcastle in something like a coal-wagon, upon a dreary wagon-way, and to be dragged for the greater part of the distance by a ROARING STEAM-ENGINE!" The very notion of such a thing was preposterous, ridiculous, and utterly absurd. When such was the state of public opinion as to railway locomotion, some idea may be formed of the clearsightedness and moral courage of the Stockton and Darlington directors in ordering three of Stephenson's locomotive engines, at a cost of several thousand pounds, against the opening of the railway. These were constructed after Stephenson's most matured designs, and embodied all the improvements which he had contrived up to that time. No. 1 engine, the "Locomotion," which was first delivered, weighed about eight tons. It had one large flue or tube through the boiler, by which the heated air passed direct from the furnace at one end, lined with fire-bricks, to the chimney at the other. The combustion in the furnace was quickened by the adoption of the steam-blast in the chimney. The heat raised was sometimes so great, and it was so imperfectly abstracted by the surrounding water, that the chimney became almost red-hot. Such engines, when put to their speed, were found capable of running at the rate of from twelve to sixteen miles an hour; but they were better adapted for the heavy work of hauling coal-trains at low speeds--for which, indeed, they were specially constructed--than for running at the higher speeds afterward adopted. Nor was it contemplated by the directors as possible, at the time when they were ordered, that locomotives could be made available for the purposes of passenger traveling. Besides, the Stockton and Darlington Railway did not run through a district in which passengers were supposed to be likely to constitute any considerable portion of the traffic.