Chittaprat

Chittaprat was an early colliery locomotive of uncertain design built around 1813–15 for use on the Wylam Colliery Waggonway in Northumberland, associated with the pioneering work of William Hedley at Wylam. The name itself — informal, evocative, apparently onomatopoeic for the sound of its exhaust — is characteristic of the very early period of steam locomotive development when individual machines were identified by nicknames rather than systematic designations.

Wylam Colliery was one of the cradles of steam locomotive development. It was at Wylam that Richard Trevithick's associate had introduced one of the earliest locomotive designs to the colliery in 1804, and it was on the Wylam Waggonway that William Hedley and Timothy Hackworth developed their famous Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly locomotives from around 1813 — machines that demonstrated that a smooth-wheeled locomotive could haul useful loads on a smooth-railed track, contradicting the then-prevalent belief that traction wheels required rack teeth to grip the rail.

Chittaprat is believed to have been one of several early locomotives operating at Wylam during this period, possibly a variant or predecessor of the Puffing Billy design. The precise specifications, builder, and fate of Chittaprat are poorly documented — as is typical of this earliest period of locomotive history, when the machines were regarded as industrial tools rather than objects of historical record. The name survives in the Wylam Colliery accounts and in early accounts of the waggonway, but the locomotive itself was scrapped without preservation, unlike Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly which survive at the Science Museum in London and the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh respectively.