The slow times were owing in part to stoppages: that first three hours had included three shoppages totalling some fifty-five minutes. “At Darlington, the train halted for half-an-hour” local historian Michael Heavisides recorded. “No. 1 was taken to a company’s reservoir to replenish her water barrel. Six waggons of coals and twenty-three of the horse waggons, laden with workmen, left the main line, and were taken down to the depot. The horses were taken out to bait. The coals were distributed to the poor of the town, and the workmen were entertained to a right good dinner, washed down with copious libations of ale in the various public-houses in the town. No. 1 having filled her water barrel, the six waggons of coal having been taken off, and the waggons containing Mr Meynell’s famous Yarm band, having been coupled on, the train started.”

For one man it was a bitter-sweet day, and that was Edward Pease, the farsighted and open-handed owner of the line. “That day Edward Pease’s son Isaac died,” wrote railway historian W. J. Gordon, “and in the silent room he heard the distant cheers telling him how his work had received its completion in the hour of his bereavement.”

A staithe is a (wooden) construction built over a river, designed for wagons to drop coal down into ships beneath. The most extensive staithes remaining today are those at Dunston in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.