Hetton Colliery Wilberforce

Wilberforce was built at George Stephenson's Forth Street works in Newcastle in 1822, broadly to the same pattern as the original 1820 Hetton Colliery locomotives but slightly heavier and incorporating refinements developed during the first two years' working of the railway. The naming for William Wilberforce — the Hull-born MP whose Slave Trade Act had been passed only 15 years earlier — reflected a fashion among colliery proprietors of the period for naming locomotives after public figures of social reform.

Wilberforce entered service on the Hetton Colliery Railway in 1822 and remained in working order for over 50 years, being rebuilt at intervals as boilers and motion components wore out. The engine was exhibited at the Stephenson Centenary celebrations held in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1881 to mark the centenary of George Stephenson's birth, by which time it was the oldest working locomotive in the world.

Wilberforce was eventually scrapped in the late 19th or early 20th century; the engine has not been preserved, although photographs from the 1881 celebrations survive.

Standard Hetton 0-4-0 pattern with long horizontal boiler, twin vertical in-boiler cylinders, side-rod coupled wheels, and a tall vertical chimney. By the time of the 1881 photographs, the engine's components had been substantially renewed but the overall layout remained original.

• Wilberforce (1822, not preserved — survived in service to c. 1875)