Rare letters detailing the early life of the Darlington and Stockton Railway go under the hammer next week.

The letters, dating from the 1830s and 1840s, include one from the founder of the railways, George Stephenson ordering railway carriage wheels from a Bradford foundry.

Other letters in the collection include one from Joseph Pease, the original treasurer of the line, and another about the first death on the North-East stretch of railway.

The letter describes the events leading to a young man's death and then details the introduction of a new braking system to prevent such accidents happening again.

The letters will be sold in Swindon by specialist auctioneers, Dominic Winter Book Auctions.

Documents expert Richard Westwood-Brookes said: "Any original material relating to the Stockton and Darlington is highly sought after by collectors and we are expecting keen bidding."

The first signs of compensation culture are evident in another pair of letters concerning a claim for damages from a lady who had travelled in the first open-topped carriage next to the engine and had had her clothes ruined by the smoke and embers coming from the engine's chimney stack.

Another pair of letters discuss the important introduction of train time.

"These last two letters are highly significant, because they deal with a scientific phenomena which was entirely down to the development of railways.

"Until the coming of the railways, travel was so slow that everywhere derived their time from the relative position of the sun at noon - what was known as 'local time'.

"Railway travel by even the 1830s was becoming so fast that local time was completely useless - certainly as far as train timetables were concerned - and so it was decided to institute 'railway time' , providing a universal time for the whole of the British isles allied to Greenwich Mean Time.

So in effect, railways invented time zones, and these two fascinating letters relate to the introduction of the system on the Stockton and Darlington."

The letters are expected to sell for between £200 and £400 each.