George Stephenson (Hetton Colliery Ry)

The Hetton Colliery locomotive workshops were the manufacturing facility where five steam locomotives were built to George Stephenson's design for the opening of the Hetton Colliery Railway in November 1822 — the world's first railway designed and built to be worked entirely without animal power. The workshops at Hetton-le-Hole in County Durham represent an important intermediate stage in the development of British locomotive manufacturing: between the improvised early experiments at Killingworth Colliery and the establishment of Robert Stephenson and Company as a dedicated locomotive builder in 1823.

The five Hetton locomotives — Dart, Tallyho, Star, Hetton, and Wilberforce — were built at the colliery's own workshops rather than at a commercial engineering firm, reflecting the still-improvised character of early locomotive manufacture in the early 1820s. They incorporated lessons from Stephenson's Killingworth experience and anticipate several features of Locomotion No. 1, which followed three years later on the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The original Hetton alignment and some of its locomotives remained in use at the colliery until 1912 — ninety years of continuous operation — making the Hetton Colliery Railway one of the most remarkable examples of engineering longevity in early railway history.

The locomotive 'Hetton' is preserved at the National Railway Museum, York as one of the oldest surviving examples of Stephenson's locomotive engineering, bridging the gap between the experimental Killingworth engines and the historically celebrated Locomotion No. 1 of 1825.