Whinfield's Foundry, Gateshead

Whinfield's Foundry was a small Tyneside ironworks owned by John Whinfield at Gateshead, where in 1805 the second known railway locomotive ever built, Trevithick's 'Gateshead Locomotive', was constructed. The engine was built to Richard Trevithick's designs by Whinfield's craftsmen for use at Wylam Colliery, but the engine never ran on the colliery's wooden plateway (which was found to be insufficiently strong) and instead spent its working life as a stationary blowing engine.

The foundry was a typical small Tyneside ironworks of the early industrial era and continued in business as a general engineering shop through the nineteenth century.