THE Stockton and Darlington Railway was the first public railway in the world to be licensed to carry fare-paying passengers behind a steam locomotive.* But passengers were not the line’s real business. That was to trundle long train-loads of coal from the coalfields of County Durham to the Tees at Stockton; and to meet the demands of this heavy freight, George Stephenson and his son Robert convinced Edward Pease, the line’s chief investor, to use steam power, establishing a new locomotive works at Forth Street in Newcastle. When the line officially opened on September 27th, 1825, Forth Street’s steam locomotive Locomotion No. 1 stood proudly at the head of a carriage named ‘Experiment’ and twenty-one coal wagons temporarily fitted out with seats.

The organisers budgeted for three hundred passengers, but almost twice as many piled into the train, reassured that the locomotive would remain meekly behind a flag-bearer on horseback to restrict speeds. Thousands of lineside spectators cheered the train on as Locomotion No. 1 took three hours to rumble eight and a half miles from Shildon to Darlington, where ten thousand more greeted it, and another three for the five miles to Stockton, now hauling thirty-one vehicles with five hundred and fifty passengers.