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To many people, the Stockton and Darlington railway was the first railway. In fact, this is not true. It was not the first passenger or freight carrying railway by over 20 years. Nor was 'Locomotion' the first steam Locomotive. What made them special was the fact that, with it's size and financial success and the fact that steam locomotion, railways and passenger carrying was all brought together, they became the catalyst for the lauch of the entire railway system the world over.
The main reason for the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the first place was to make coalfields in Aukland competetive enough to compete with those nearer the coast. These coalfields had the advantage of being near the sea and so transportation costs were much less than coal coming all the way from Aukland. It took many years of planning and wrangling for and sort of work to begin on the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Indeed, the bill presented to parliament at the time proposing the railway was originally defeated in April 1819, with one of the many objectors being Lord Darlington himself, who was incensed that the railway actually ran straight through one of his fox coverts !! By 1823 however, another bill was ready to be presented to parliament. This time, with different people behind the idea. These men, one George Stephenson, who provided his railway expertise and Edward Pease, father of Joseph (founder of Middlesbrough), who put up a lot of the capital, laid out there plans for the railway with a lot more care and consideration. They overcome many obstacles that contributed to the originals bills demise and even re-routed the railway to go around Lord Darlington's treasured fox covet! After yet more wrangling and further re-routes, the bill was finally passed by parliament and given Royal Assent on 23rd May, 1823. Indeed, so confident were the men that they would be successful, that work had actually been started on the construction of the railway on 23rd May 1822, a whole year earlier! By September 1825, the railway was ready for public use and on the 17th, notices appeared in the local papers announcing the grand opening on the 27th. This caused great excitement in the local population and beyond and anyone who was anyone (and many who weren't!) started gathering along the route well before dawn on the 27th. The first part of the journey was completed by a mixture of horses and winches as far as Shildon, where the newly constructed steam engine 'Locomotion' was lying in wait to pull the wagons on the remaining stretch to Stockton. In charge of Locomotion was none other than George Stephenson. The journey was altogether almost without problems, apart fromt he necessary removal of one defective wagon that derailed the train twice. The cavalcade arrived in darlington and took on water, unloaded coal to be distributed to the poor of the area and then set of on it's two hour journey to Stockton. Again, the journey was 'almost' uneventful, say for some poor soul falling off a wagon and 'dreadfully crushing' his foot! On arrival in Stockton, 'Locomotion' and it's wagons were greeted by hourdes of people, flags, bands and a 21 gun salute. It had made it's history making journey, only leaving one carraige and foot behind! Festivities continued into the night, with the 102 'special guests' sitting to dine in the Town Hall and many of the revellers hitting Stockton for a night on the........tiles!
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