The shortest of all waggonways belonged to Friar’s Goose Colliery. It was made possible by the effort to drain Gateshead Park and was about a quarter of a mile long. Both workings and staith were later reused in developments of the Tyne Main Colliery and in the reshufflings of Gateshead staiths.

The third wooden dolly was formerly the figurehead of the barque 'Expert', which belonged to Peter and John Stephenson. In 1864 the ship was being repaired by chandlers Harcus & Stroud and the figurehead was removed to be used as a wooden dolly. At the time the foundation stone of the Low Lights Dock was being laid and it was considered a good time to remove Mr. Hare's old wooden dolly (HER 5961) and replace it with a new and more beautiful dolly. The figurehead from the 'Expert' was set up by Mr. John Larkus and Mr. James Pringle on 22nd June 1864. This figure too suffered from being chipped by sailors wanting good luck souvenirs for their journey. When the dolly's nose was hacked off, Robert Pow, a blacksmith in Liddell Street, had to insert an iron nose. Sailors began nailing coins with holes drilled through them onto the wooden dolly for good luck. The third dolly was replaced in 1901. The third doll reappeared in the 1930s in an antique shop in Newcastle, after the dealer, Mr. Seery, bought her from a fisherman's widow. She was bought by a Dane and is thought to be part of a collection in a Denmark museum. Mr Seery commented that 'she had not a flake of paint on her - her nose was missing and she appeared quite a formidable sight' {1}.

The second wooden dolly was placed at Custom's House Quay by a Mr. Hare, sailmaker around 1850. It is thought also to have been a ship's figurehead, but nothing else is known of its origin. She stood on the spot until 1864.

In the 1630s the Ship Tax returns show that Stella Grand Lease Colliery was the third largest colliery on the south bank of the Tyne, behind Whickham Grand Lease and Winlaton. It too had a pre-Civil War waggonway. The freehold belonged to the Tempest family, but outside the manor much of the land belonged to the Bishops of Durham. The bishopric commons had not been included in the Grand Lease yet their Ryton royalty was known as ‘Grand Lease Stella’.
An assessment of Stella Grand Lease in 1636 suggests the waggonway had already been built; it had an annual value of £1700 and a production well over 2000T. Mention of ‘Kiofield’ in a lease (DUPD CC 184961/617) has led to the suggestion the way existed as far as Kyo, south-east of Ryton and over three miles from Stella staiths, from the beginning but there is no proof of its having been so extensive before 1660. The way was probably built by Henry Maddison and his associates although an earliest date for its construction is unknown. The Strathmore plan of no later than 1728 bears the legend ‘…Stella Grand Lease Waggon way was the first way that was laid in the River Tyne about Ninety Years ago by Robt Sanderson Esqr.’ that is, sometime in the 1630s. A latest date can be set by a case of 1653 and colliery accounts (C10 30/156; ZCO IV 47/1).
Accounts in the 1670s show the output form Stella was about 2500T a year and this may have been the average traffic of the Way since its beginning. An archaeological evaluation at Landscape Terrace, Greenside, in 2013 by ARS Ltd. Revealed the graded impressions of timber sleepers and the remains of a drainage gully associated with the Stella Grand Lease Way. The waggonway would have consisted of a series of roughly hewn, rounded timber sleepers measuring c.1.8m x 0.2m laid into the natural substrate at intervals of c.0.65m. These would have been used to support timber rails forming an E-W aligned waggonway. The waggonway had a shallow drainage gully on its south side with a depth of 0.04m and this was backed by a low bank that survives to a height of 0.4m. The waggonway remains were buried 0.55m bgl.

In about 1693, the Winlaton (Brockwell) Way was subject to the first recorded case of physical assault on a waggonway - a trench, or ditch, was dug across it. In 1713, the Brockwell Way was radically reorganised and it was taken upstream to new staiths at Stella. This necessitated the building of a bridge over the Blaydon Burn, whose northern abutments still remain. Unfortunately, the track on the south bank is hard to follow but the course of the new waggonway up the valley to the Brockwell area, and ultimately Barlow Fell, is still clear on the ground. The way ran to two staiths at Blaydon – ‘panncoale’ and ‘shipcoale’ staiths (‘pancoal’ a low quality product used by Shields salt pans, and ‘shipcoal’ the quality product destined for the London market). The use of Blaydon Staiths necessitated the retention of the original approach by the old Winlaton Way through the Horsecrofts.

In the 1630s the second largest colliery south of the Tyne was Blaydon, more usually called Winlaton. It had an output of 3000T. The land belonged to the Neville family and had been leased to various Newcastle merchants until the manor was sold in 1569 to four inter-related merchants. When the lease ended in 1581 they and their heirs worked the colliery for 50 years or more. Early claims that there was no waggonway in Winlaton in 1632 (Taylor 1852) appear to be unfounded. Evidence from a London Chancery case of 1650, over the estate of Sir Robert Hodgson (d.1643), refers to ‘wagons’ and confirms that there was indeed a waggonway in Winlaton before the Civil War. Records also show that replacement wagons were needed by 1633, implying they must have been in service for at least a year or two, and perhaps longer. The way was probably built by William Selby, son of Sir William Selby (d.1649), as part of a considerable refurbishment of the colliery in 1634.
The colliery was not an easy one to work, with difficult geology and coal which deteriorated in quality that became unfit for the London market. Debts mounted for the Selbys with Sir William dying insolvent in 1649 and half the Selby share was mortgaged by 1651. The other merchant owners of the colliery fared no better and as the families concerned were so closely related, they all went down together.
The exact route of this early waggonway is uncertain and the suggestion in A History of Blaydon that it led from Lands Colliery, south of Axwell Park, is incorrect as the colliery is first heard of in 1728. However, in the Horsecrofts area of Blaydon, a strip of land about one mile long from the Rose and Crown public house to Blaydon Staith, between the Blaydon Burn and the Blaydon to Winlaton road, was the site of the later Winlaton Way dating to the 1690s and is also likely to have been that of the 1630s waggonway. There may have been a branch south-west to Brockwell, but this is uncertain. Records from 1677 (ZBG 4/16) detailing the lease of the colliery show that the Winlaton Way was still operating.

The origin of the East Winlaton Way is unknown and may have been laid by one of a number of modest partnerships that arose in Winlaton the last 20 or 30 years of the 17th century. The East Winlaton Way is first mentioned in a dispute involving Sir James Clavering and dates to a year or so before his death in March 1702. The waggonway had been recently constructed on the west bank of the Derwent, through closes at the south-east corner of Axwell Park. A plan dating between 1732 and 1748, of waggonways from the Hagghill Turn to the staiths at Derwenthaugh, shows the route of the 1701 waggonway was followed 25 years later by the third Western Way. The East Winlaton Way is also shown on a sketch of the second Western Way’s crossing of the Derwent and was probably destined for Winlaton Mill. It is probably also the waggonway mentioned in litigation of 1727 where it was claimed that in 1719 there was a waggonway almost a mile long laid in Winlaton manor. The East Winlaton Way is one of several waggonways known to have carried industrial freight other than coal. The Crowley Iron Works took over the former Tempest coalmill in 1691 and exported its finished products by this waggonway.

Lands Waggonway was built by Albert Silvertop in 1728 and was considered a branch of the Western Way. In 1742 it was given branches to new pits and later, in the 1750s, a new pit was sunk called the Pyanett, or Magpie, Pit. Operations here were extended in the 1760s west of the late Norman Riding Hospital, where remains of a waggonway can be traced on the ground, but which has no obvious connection to a major way. Lands Colliery seems to have failed by 1787 when the Lands Way does not appear on Gibson’s map.

The construction of the third Western Way, by Lady Jane Clavering, began in 1728 when negotiations between The Grand Allies and the Western partnership to obtain a monopoly collapsed. The new way probably opened on 24 June 1728 and eventually became amalgamated with the Tanfield Way.
The third Western Way turned off to the west from its two predecessors in Burnopfield. It then faced a serious obstacle in the need to lose nearly 500 feet (150 metres) in height in the three quarters of a mile fall to the Derwent crossing. The Busty Bank earthworks were later said to have been the most difficult and expensive so far undertaken, but no documentation of the construction has survived. The run was also expensive to maintain and was rebuilt at least once during its lifetime; the earthworks went out of use in 1800. Western III ran down from Burnopfield to the present girder footbridge across Bryan’s Leap Gill, and crossed there to the bottom of the present Busty Bank by a considerable bridge; there are signs of a “bridge of earth” over a culvert. The way then doubled back across the gill using the present road and still-extant original embankment at the Leap Mill to join the Burnopfield to Rowlands Gill road, which it followed to the Derwent. The river crossing was at Cowford Bridge over a conventional battery, but built over a single arch over the river. The width of the river here means this cannot have been a low arch and the earth embankment on top of it may have reached a height of perhaps 50 or 60 feet above the river, making it a rival to the Causey Arch. Together with the Tanfield Way, Western Way III represented the apogee of the wooden waggonway, built on an altogether different scale to their predecessors.
The Western Way III was contested by The Grand Allies, but they lost their case and in 1728 the Western Way was finally established.

The second Western Way was an alliance between Clavering, Bowes, Simpson, Harding, Pitt and Ridley. It was the subject of much bitter dispute between rivals in the coal trade. It was allowed to cross the Derwent and reach new and more extensive staiths at Derwenthaugh and completed the move away from tidal limits. The way took a line directly from Crookgate into the Gibside estate, and necessitated a considerable embankment over Snipes Dene. From Gibside the line rejoined the old Hollinside Way in Axwell by running west of Bird Hill through Hollinside. Western Way II is effectively Western Way I with its trouble spots bypassed by two lengthy but technically superior diversions.
Western Way II was built swiftly. It was designed by Axwell agent and viewer William Laidler and the engineer was William Sanderson of Ryton, grandson of the builder of the Stella Grand Lease Way. The Western Way II was much more seriously engineered than the first Western Way. The only run on the new way was in Axwell land, where a steep fall to the River Derwent once stood in the Whickham Morrisfield, although there is no trace of it today. Once the new way opened the old one was expendable, but it was judged in 1722 that it should remain open.
In 1722 the Derwent Bridge was washed away, together with its approach embankments. It was replaced by another built at a safer height. The passage of both Western Way I and II through Axwell lands was closed in 1726 with the effect of closing all the western collieries – 40% of Tyne capacity. However, a new partnership was created at this time pooling all collieries, wayleaves and waggonways for 99 years, and was known as The Grand Allies and the Axwell interests were eventually leased to them.