The railway that changed the world
The railway that changed the world
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A painting portraying Locomotion No 1’ s historic first journey along the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825.
Celebrating 200 years of the Stockton & Darlington Railway
Railway pioneer – Edward Pease.
Two hundred years ago, on September 27 1825, a crowd of thousands gathered along tracks that ran through what is now Aycliffe Business Park to witness something extraordinary – the launch of the world’ s first public railway powered by steam.
At its head, George Stephenson’ s pioneering Locomotion No. 1 hauled a procession of coal wagons, flour and around 450 passengers – most perched in open wagons – at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour. It was noisy, smoky and groundbreaking.
The Stockton & Darlington Railway( S & DR) had been born – and with it, the modern railway age.
The anniversary was celebrated on Friday, September 26, when a replica of Locomotion No. 1 reenacted that historic voyage, passing through Aycliffe Business Park and Heightington Station – the first and oldest train station in the world.
The line was originally designed for one thing: moving coal.
County Durham’ s inland collieries needed a faster, cheaper route to market than packhorses or rutted roads, and a canal plan had already failed.
Enter Edward Pease, a Darlington Quaker and visionary wool merchant. Convinced there was a better way, he backed a new type of infrastructure – a“ railway” open to anyone willing to pay a toll.
Pease brought in engineer George Stephenson, then perfecting his steam engines in Killingworth. Stephenson not only resurveyed the route but also convinced the directors to embrace his unproven locomotives. Their decision would change history.
The 26-mile route ran from the collieries at Etherley, through Shildon and Darlington, to Stockton-on-Tees.
While coal wagons were steam-hauled from the start, passengers at first travelled by horse-drawn coaches, until steam carriages were introduced in 1833.
What began as a coal line soon reshaped the region. To handle booming exports, the S & DR built a branch to a fledgling port at Middlesbrough – then little more than a farmstead.
Within a year, the new town had a population of more than 2,000. Today, it’ s a thriving centre of 138,000 people – a town literally born of the railway.
In its early years, the S & DR was a bold experiment. Locomotives were temperamental, wheels broke and speeds were modest. Many still preferred the
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