 In 1821 he made several trips to inspect railway developments in the Northumberland coalfield and met George Stephenson of Killingworth Colliery, his son Robert and the ironfounder William Losh.This resulted in an agreement for James to market the Stephenson/Losh patent locomotive (which James branded as the "Land-Agent" type) in England south of the Humber-Mersey line, with a supplementary agreement for Stephenson and Losh to use the patent for multitubular locomotive boilers taken out by William Henry James, William James’s son.In 1822 James, with his brother-in-law Paul Padley as chief surveyor, began on behalf of Joseph Sandars, a Liverpool businessman, and others to survey a route for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in Lancashire; and in 1823-4 he surveyed three possible routes for the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway in Kent.