Loco-motive or Movable Engines

Every child who has ever drawn a train draws roughly the same thing: an engine, a line of wagons, people waving. The opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway on 27 September 1825 gave the world that picture. George Stephenson drove a steam engine called Locomotion from Shildon towards Stockton-on-Tees with a long train behind it, and crowds turned out along the line to watch.

What the picture leaves out is that on most days after that one, the Stockton and Darlington wasn't really a railway in the sense anyone now means. It was a road with iron in it, and most of what moved along it was pulled by horses.

A coal road

The line existed for coal. It was built to connect the Durham coalfield west of Bishop Auckland with the market town of Darlington and the port of Stockton, where coal could go out by sea, and it ran about 26 miles.

The men behind it were local businessmen and colliery owners who started promoting it in 1818. The most important was Edward Pease, a Quaker merchant from Darlington, and Quaker money ran through the whole enterprise. What they planned was a horse-drawn line, and that is what Parliament approved in 1821.

They also planned it as a public road. The company would own the track, but it would not run the traffic. As Grace's Guide, the old engineering reference, puts it, the company "merely owned the tracks and did not operate trains; anyone who paid the S&DR money could freely operate steam trains or horse-drawn wagon loads". A colliery owner, a coal merchant or a carrier could put his own wagons and his own horses on the rails, pay the toll, and go. It was a turnpike, borrowed straight from the roads, with rails added to make the wheels run easier.

The engine that nearly wasn't in the Act

Pease worked with the colliery engineer George Stephenson, and Stephenson persuaded him that the line should use steam. The route was redesigned in 1823 to be steam-hauled for much of its length, and the company went back to Parliament for a revised Act.

That Act permitted the use of "loco-motive or movable engines". According to Grace's Guide the phrase was nearly struck out, because officials did not really understand what it meant. Had it gone, the line would have stayed legally what it started as, a horse road.

Even with steam allowed, the western end couldn't be worked by an engine on its own. The hills there were too steep. Coal wagons were hauled up the inclines by ropes from stationary engines and pulled along the level stretches by horses.

Opening day

On the morning of 27 September 1825 a train was made up at Shildon. Locomotion, the first engine built by Robert Stephenson and Company at its works in Newcastle, was at the front. Behind it came wagons of coal and goods, wagons fitted out for passengers, and one purpose-built coach, the Experiment, for the company's directors and guests.

There were officially about 300 ticket holders, according to the National Railway Museum, and possibly twice as many more simply climbed on. Historic England puts the total at about 600. Stephenson drove. The first stretch of about 12 miles took around two hours.

It is the image that has lasted. It was also a show, put on for one day.

Every day after

The scheduled life of the line was much messier. Passengers, to begin with, were carried in horse-drawn coaches run by independent operators under licence from the company, as Historic England describes it. Coal trains might be steam or horses depending on who owned them. Single track meant traffic going opposite ways had to meet and pass at intervals, with drivers who worked for different people, at different speeds, with nobody in overall charge.

The engines themselves were unreliable. In 1828 Locomotion's boiler exploded, killing its driver, John Cree. Timothy Hackworth, the company's resident engineer, rebuilt it at Shildon, and his works there went on to build some of the earliest locomotives sent abroad, to places including Canada and Russia. But for years the horse remained a perfectly reasonable choice on the Stockton and Darlington, and plenty of people made it.

What the line did prove early was the economics. By December 1825, three months after opening, there were already favourable comments about the reduction in the price of coal, according to Grace's Guide. Cheap haulage from the pits to the river did exactly what the Quaker promoters had promised their investors.

The road that had to become a railway

The open-access idea broke down as soon as the trains went faster. A slow horse wagon and a steam train on the same single line, with no timetable and no signals, simply didn't mix, and the faster steam got, the worse it became.

By 1833 steam had become the dominant power, and the company stopped being a landlord. It became the sole operator on its own line, laid parallel double track, and brought in timetables and signals. That reorganisation, more than the opening day, is when the Stockton and Darlington became a railway in the modern sense.

By then it had been overtaken. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened on 15 September 1830 between two great cities, was the first to rely entirely on steam, run a scheduled passenger service and use a signalling system, and the first to be double track throughout. Historians who call Liverpool and Manchester the first modern railway aren't being unfair to Stockton. They are pointing at the decisions Stockton had to make later and Liverpool made at the start: one owner, one operator, steam only, and a timetable.

What lasted

The Stockton and Darlington still gets the birthday, and deserves it. It was the first public railway to use steam, and it ran on Stephenson's track gauge, the one most of the world's railways still use. It showed investors that a line built to cut the cost of moving coal could pay. Its bicentenary was celebrated along the old route in September 2025.

But the most modern thing about it may be the arrangement that failed. Separating the owner of the track from the people running trains on it, and charging them a fee for access, is how a good deal of Europe's railways are organised today. The Stockton and Darlington tried it first, in 1825, with horses.

The bridge in the watercolour above carried the line over the River Skerne at Darlington. The Revd John Skinner, touring the north-east that August, sketched it a month before the opening. It is the only known picture of the bridge as built, before buttresses were added to strengthen it, and there isn't an engine anywhere in it.

Sources

• Historic England, "The Pioneering Stockton and Darlington Railway", Heritage Calling, September 2025 (the line as the world's first standard-gauge, steam-hauled public railway; the line connecting the Durham coalfield west of Bishop Auckland with Darlington and Stockton; Edward Pease as a Quaker merchant; promotion from 1818 and approval in 1821 as a horse-drawn railway; the 1823 redesign for steam over much of its 26 miles; rope-hauled inclines and horses on the level; the Experiment and about 600 passengers on opening day; horse-drawn passenger services independently operated under licence).
• Grace's Guide to British Industrial History, "Stockton and Darlington Railway" (the company owning the track and not operating trains, with anyone paying free to run steam or horse traffic; the revised Act's "loco-motive or movable engines" and its near deletion; the two-hour run for the first 12 miles; the Experiment carrying dignitaries; favourable comments on coal prices by December 1825; steam dominant by 1833 and the company becoming sole operator with double track, timetables and signals).
• National Railway Museum, "Shildon, the Cradle of the Railways and Locomotion No.1" (Locomotion as the first engine built by Robert Stephenson and Co in Newcastle; about 300 official ticket holders and perhaps twice as many more; the 1828 boiler explosion that killed John Cree; Hackworth's rebuild and his Shildon works supplying locomotives to Canada and Russia).
• Science Museum Group Collection, "Steam locomotive No. 1 'Locomotion', Stockton & Darlington Railway" (the locomotive's history and preservation in the National Collection).
• Britannica, "Liverpool and Manchester Railway" (opening on 15 September 1830 as the first railway worked entirely by steam, with scheduled passenger services, signalling and double track throughout).
• ITV News, "Stockton and Darlington Railway 200: How 26 miles changed the world", September 2025 (the bicentenary celebrations along the route).
• Wikimedia Commons, "Skerne Bridge, Darlington, in 1825, by Revd. John Skinner" (Skinner's August 1825 tour; the watercolour as the only known image of the bridge as built, before strengthening buttresses; British Library Add MS 33684).