A 1773 diary entry by waggonway engineer William Gibson documents waggonway activity at Willington, twelve years before the report's 1785 construction date

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Carlton and Williams's excavation report quotes a diary entry from William Gibson, a Tyneside waggonway engineer: "Monday 23rd August 1773: At Willington with Mr Brown – designed a branch of Waggonway from the Engine Pit to join the partnership way." This documents waggonway engineering activity "at Willington" already in 1773 — twelve years before the 1785 date the report elsewhere gives for Bigges Main's sinking, the date the vault's whole Willington claim-cluster is anchored to (see claim-willington-1785-siding-measured-4ft8-5in-same-gauge-as-main-line).

The entry does not by itself establish a gauge, or that the 1773 activity is continuous with the 1785-dated, later-excavated remains rather than an earlier, separate phase of construction on the same site. It is recorded here as a documentary fact — the oldest dated evidence of waggonway activity at Willington located in this session's reading — not as a resolution of the 1785 dating question. Whether it complicates or merely predates the excavated 1785 gauge is not investigated further in this session.