Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' account of its 2013 excavation holds the full 4 ft 8.5 in gauge already existed in 1785 at the Willington Waggonway, 44 years before Stephenson's Liverpool & Manchester line — directly contradicting the 'belated 1829 half-inch' account

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Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, reporting on its 2013 excavation of the Willington Waggonway at the former Neptune Shipyard near Wallsend, states that the waggonway — dated to 1785 — "is the earliest railway that has been discovered which was built to what became the international 'standard' gauge, defined as 4' 8 1/2" or 1435mm," and adds that the later Killingworth Waggonway, where George Stephenson worked, "used part of the Willington Waggonway to reach the river Tyne," and that "the gauge of the Willington Waggonway... therefore set the gauge for the Killingworth Waggonway and ultimately the rest of the world."

If accurate, this directly contradicts claim-stephensons-4ft8in-gauge-predates-1829-only-final-halfinch-dated-there: it would place the entire 4 ft 8.5 in figure, half-inch included, 44 years before the Liverpool & Manchester line and before Stephenson's career, making his practice an inheritance rather than an origination even of the half-inch. The two claims were gathered in the same research session and are not reconciled by any source found: they simply disagree on when the full figure originated. [unverified-quant — needs primary; actively contested]. The peer-reviewed excavation report behind this blog post — Richard Carlton and Alan Williams, "The Discovery and Excavation of the Willington Waggonway," in Dominique Bell (ed.), Setting the Standard — was not accessible this session (an academia.edu copy returned HTTP 403 on every attempted route; the book itself was not located online). See question-verify-willington-waggonway-1785-excavation-report.