The Willington excavation report's own significance claim rests on Killingworth's Stephenson-era association, not an independent Willington priority claim

history-of-technologystandardizationrailroad-gaugewagonwaysgeorge-stephensoncontested

The vault already records that Carlton and Williams's excavation report defines the international "standard" gauge, in its Conclusions, as "ultimately defined as 4' 8½" or 1.435 m" (see claim-willington-1785-siding-measured-4ft8-5in-same-gauge-as-main-line). The same sentence continues past what that note quotes: the report states Willington's association "with Killingworth... makes it a find of international significance given the association of the Killingworth line with the origin of the standard gauge." The report's own stated basis for Willington's significance is therefore relational, not intrinsic — it leans on the Killingworth line's association with George Stephenson's later career, not on an independent claim that Willington itself fixed or originated the gauge figure.

This narrows how the report can be read against the "44 years before Stephenson" framing in claim-willington-waggonway-1785-excavation-claims-full-gauge-predates-stephenson: the excavators' own significance claim borrows weight from the Stephenson-linked line rather than displacing it, which sits alongside claim-willington-excavators-decline-origin-claim-point-to-heaton-banks — the same report's further hedge that the actual origin "seem[s] to lie earlier," at a different, unexcavated site. See question-verify-willington-waggonway-1785-excavation-report.