Two hundred years ago, Shildon in north-east England changed the way we travel forever – and its legacy shaped rail networks around the globe.
“Would you just look at that?” said Niccy Hallifax, eyes smiling behind chunky designer glasses. “So much history and nostalgia – even if you’re not a trainspotter.”
We were standing before Europe’s largest collection of historic rail vehicles at Locomotion, a railway museum in Shildon in County Durham, north-east England.
Up close, the colliery engines, wood-lagged locomotives and gleaming apple-green railroad cars seemed to transport us into a distant past. That nostalgia was also evident in the vast array of steam trains, freight vehicles, trolleys and wagons – all hallmarks of Shildon, the world’s first railway town.
There are many reasons to visit Locomotion, but this year the museum is also part of a milestone in rail history. Two hundred years ago, Shildon was the first place in the world to witness a steam locomotive hauling passengers on a public railway when the Stockton and Darlington Railway first clanked into motion on 27 September 1825. Now, this industrial heartland is the focal point of a nationwide celebration of the birth of the modern railway, when Britain changed how the world travelled forever.
“Given Shildon’s global influence, it’s a shame its story has been forgotten,” said Hallifax, director of S&DR200, a multi-arts festival celebrating the region’s epoch-defining history.
“This is Britain’s ‘cradle of the railways’, and what happened affected everyone here. The railways employed entire communities. Then locals went to war on the trains they built. These are the narratives we want to tell the world about. Shildon’s is a story about railways, but it’s also one about people.”
For Hallifax and so many locals, the S&DR200 festival is the most anticipated event in years – more than a decade in the making. I could sense that excitement during my summer visit, too.
Feverish talk among rail enthusiasts was of the return of a newly restored replica of Locomotion No 1, the trailblazing steam locomotive built in 1825 by the region’s rail pioneers George Stephenson (known as the “Father of Railways”) and his son, Robert, who carried on his father’s engineering legacy.
Over the bicentenary weekend – 26-28 September 2025 – the cast-iron locomotive will once again run along sections of the original Stockton and Darlington line, the very first passenger railway.
Hallifax described the festival to me as “a love sonnet to the region”. It is also an essential element of Railway 200, a momentous nationwide campaign backed by Visit England and Network Rail to champion Britain’s rail heritage throughout 2025. There is a desire – indeed, a need – to preserve this history.
Across Britain, there are 211 heritage railways, served by 460 stations across 600 miles (965km) of steel track, according to Railway 200. But even among them, Shildon is railway royalty. In its immediate surrounds are former railway towns Stockton-on-Tees and Newton Aycliffe, home to Heighington Station, widely believed to be the world’s first railway station.
In the nearby market town of Darlington, carriages rattle like clockwork over the Skerne Bridge, the world’s oldest railway bridge. Uniting Bishop Auckland and Shildon is a section of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway track known as the Brusselton Incline, devised by George Stephenson to help engines move uphill. Middlesbrough, to the east of Stockton, is the world’s first planned railway town.
Between these places lie stretches where historical good sheds, iron warehouses, coaling drops, signalman’s cottages and loading bays might pass another century without any pomp or pageantry.
In fact, in many ways, the legacy of post-industrial decline can still be felt – and the former railroad communities are starkly at odds with their past. Yet alongside the rusting sheds and empty yards, there are signs of renewal, from heritage tourism to new cultural projects designed to keep the railway story alive.
Hopes are that a new walking trail will help spark regeneration. Once complete, the 26-mile (42km) S&DR Trail of Discovery will trace the line’s historic route with way markers, murals and information panels, linking sites from Witton Park to Stockton Riverside.
Fittingly, the trail passes Locomotion itself, as well as Hopetown Darlington, an open-air railway museum on the site of a former foundry and carriage works in Darlington that’s a hive of railway memorabilia with locomotive replicas and some 30,000 artefacts, from original tickets and station signs to workers’ tools and uniforms.
Why was County Durham home to the world’s first passenger train? Alison Grange, Hopetown Darlington’s collections engagement manager, tells me the answer was coal.
“During the Industrial Revolution, the demand for coal to heat homes and power new technologies was such that a new way of transporting it more efficiently needed to be created,” she said, as we explored the 7.5-acre site. “We were the first stepping stone for railways, then it was Liverpool and Manchester, then the world.”
By the early 19th Century, with the coal pits booming, mine owners wanted quick and cheap transport to take their product to the ports. Some wanted a canal. Others wanted a railway. Some resisted change entirely.
It was Edward Pease, a wool merchant, who forced the breakthrough. His influence within Darlington’s Quaker community secured 70% of the funding for the railroad, and, as a hat tip to his enterprise, it became known as the “Quaker Line”. George Stephenson himself prophesised: “You will live to see the day when the railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in the country… railroads will become the great highway for the king and all his subjects.”
At first, passengers were an afterthought. “The paradox is, the railway was built for goods like iron, coal, lime and corn,” said Grange. “When the railway opened, with coaches drawn by horses, there was no passenger infrastructure.”
But change came quickly. Between July 1826 and June 1827, more than 30,000 passengers travelled on the horse-drawn services. The Stockton and Darlington Railway then took over passenger services in 1833, with locomotives used instead of carthorses to pull the trains.
Still today, the Stockton and Darlington Railway’s influence lingers. It was the first to create different classes of travel. Tickets were sold at coaching stops along the route that quickly became stations. Rail time became standard time, later inspiring the creation of time zones.
Most significantly, it set the blueprint for railways worldwide. The Stockton and Darlington Railway triggered train mania, with inventors and engineers travelling from France, the US and Prussia to take detailed notes to help build their own railways back home.
The Stephensons went on to create and influence railroads around the globe, including in Canada, Egypt, Germany, Argentina and Norway. And even today, China’s High-Speed Rail network, the world’s most extensive, still uses the same rail gauge that Stephenson invented in Shildon 200 years ago.
The story of Shildon is for trainspotters and travellers who like rivets and iron, engines and axles. That’s all true. But it’s also for those, like me, who find inspiration in the reach of local history – in the idea that one small town in County Durham could send ripples that reshaped travel, industry and time itself across the globe.
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