Steam Elephant was a six-wheeled locomotive of
Stephenson gauge. It was built for the Wallsend Waggonway, an
edge railway now known to have been of gauge. As with Stephenson's
Killingworth locomotives of the year before, it had a
centre-flue boiler with two vertical
cylinders of about set into its top centreline. The cylinders drove slide bar mounted beams which turned crankshafts driving the axles through 2:1
reduction gears between the frames. It had a tall, tapering chimney, the lower part being surrounded by a
feedwater heater. It would have weighed about 7.5 tons and had a top speed of around and a load capacity of about 90 tons over a short distance. It is now considered to have been designed by
John Buddle and
William Chapman for the Wallsend Waggonway and colliery at
Wallsend on the north bank of the
River Tyne in
1815 using metal components supplied by Hawks of
Gateshead. It appears originally not to have been very successful at Wallsend, probably due to lack of adhesion on the wooden rails there, nor on trial at
Washington. Following the introduction of
iron rails at Wallsend, it had a working life there longer than many contemporaneous locomotives, until at least the mid-1820s. There is evidence that it was then rebuilt for use at the
Hetton collieries, working there for a further decade. ==Replica==