What remains of the "first" steam powered passenger railway line?
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- Опубліковано 22 жов 2023
- The Stockton-Darlington Railway wasn't the first time steam locomotives had been used to pull people, but it was the first time they had been used to pull passengers over any distance worth talking about. In 1825 that day came when a line running all the way from the coal pits in the hills around County Durham to the River Tees at Stockton was opened officially. This was an experiment, a practice, a great endeavour by local businessmen and engineers, such as the famous George Stephenson, who astounded crowds of onlookers with the introduction of 'Locomotion 1' halfway along the line, which began pulling people towards Darlington and then the docks at Stockton.
This was a day that would not only transform human transportation forever, but accelerate the industrial revolution to a blistering pace.
In this video I want to look at what remains of that line - not the bit still in use between the two towns, but the bit out in the coalfields. And I want to see how those early trailblazers tackled the rolling hills, with horses and stationary steam engines to create a true amalgamation of old-world and new-world technologies.
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Closer to completion than HS2 will ever get.
😂
Uh….meow
Yes I worked for the railways for 19 years and have to say we should have copied the Indian Railways idea! The whole reasoning for HS2 was to alleviate the congestion on the West Coast mainline (old LMS Route). So politicians went straight for the build an extra costly passenger railway. What India has done successfully is build not one but two dedicated freight lines less expense and sorting out the overcrowding problems? Ming you in 6 years when the rail network grinds to a halt and the airlines are overbooked and the motorways are packed the BBC and all the other idiots will be the first to complain why didn’t we finish HS2 (imagine poor old Brunel trying to build the GWR these days?)
Well obviously, it's already been built
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤
As a Stockton lass born and bred, I must say whoever had the bright idea of pulling down that work of Victorian art we locals called STOCKTON STATION took away the heart of the town, that station was a working museum itself and to think people would have traveled from afar to visit, I left 40 years back only to call back again 10 years ago to see nothing but a glorified bus stop I was shedding a tear as a spent my transporting days there, spotting the Scotsman in 68 and memories of that victorian carriage that stood on its platform now in york museum great video I know most of the areas you covered
The bridge over the gaunless actually still exists. It's on display in the car park of the National Railway Museum in York.
It can be seen from indoors, through the windows near the Pedestrian Subway that connects the two main buildings of the museum
Its actually now being reconstructed at Locomotion Shildon at the time of writing.
Then Put it back where it came from!
Aah, then I have seen it, in 1987 when I visited the NRM in York.
Yeah he said in the video
Just so sad the bridge is not there. Surely it's a national treasure being the first ever Iron Bridge.
It's not. The first iron bridge is in Telford, in a place named, fittingly enough, Ironbridge
@@nicktrains2234- Ironic how UK place names are so common in Pennsylvania. The Reading Railroad had a station in Telford. On the way there on that line, it passed North Wales.
@@OldsVistaCruiserits not ironic, settlers from England named the towns they were founding after towns in England.
The remains of the Gaunless bridge are being reconstructed at Locomotion Shildon. The stone abutments seen in the video are planned to be reused and a new bridge deck put in for the S&DR multi-use path.
@@nicktrains2234 Iron Railway bridge, commentator said. Telford is first Iron bridge. Telford bridge was actually an advert of what could be done with iron.
Ollie, you get "over excited and over enthusiastic," never -- just kidding, that's one of the best parts of your channel. This was a great piece of Railroad History -- nothing beats vintage steam. The Skerne Bridge just goes to show if you do it right the first time, it will last.
Thanks for your time, work and posting.....
mike
Thanks Mike! Love a bit of vintage steam! Yes the Bridge is even better in real life than on video. It's great that it's still there just doing it's job, no fuss.
I bet if the builders/workers could see that the bridge is still standing and being used, they would be proud and amazed.......@@BeeHereNowuk
@@BeeHereNowuk Actually, almost every picture of the Skerne Bridge on opening day is wrong, because they were painted 50 years after the event. The bridge embankments started to give way under the strain of the heavy trains, and had to be strengthened. The only known picture of it as originally built is this: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skerne_Bridge,_Darlington,_in_1825,_by_Revd._John_Skinner.jpg
Beamish Museum has a working replica of 'Puffing Billy' (c.1814) which travels a short distance at about five miles an hour. I thought it was an excellent way to understand how "speed" must have felt to early rail passengers. To me, it felt steady and not that slow.
*1914
@@ArthurD No. 1814.
Technically it was used to moving alot of heavy coal wagons not so much passengers.
Also back in those days alternative was walking or horse and cart.
It would be the amount it could move at one time that would count. A stagecoach would be much faster.
A great hommage to the first railway in Great Britten. Greetings from Bavaria, Germany, where the first railway was build in Germany, due to operation December 1835, ordered by King Maximilian from Bayern. This Stock corporation railway from Nürnberg to Fürth is a tramway today and was never connected with the later states owned railways.
A Muslim Turk Taqqidin invented the steam engine 300 years before. Muslim Turks development and invented a lot of steam technology.
@katishindus691 he never built one. He just described a very rudimentary one in a book. So no he didn't invent the steam engine. The Greek Egyptian mathematician and engineer hero of alexandra described the device in the 1st century AD. So technically he invented it.
By the way, the one in this video isn't just the first in Great Britain, but the first in the world. We invented the steam engine and the industrial revolution.
@@katishindus691 That is absolutely not true. Keep dreaming.
I share your enthusiasm unabashedly for railroading history. I live in Colorado, USA, and enjoy the more recent history railroading has to offer here. My goal is to take an extended journey to England for the main purpose of experiencing first hand the great railroading offered there. I’ll be sure to visit the Stockton-Darlington railway, thanks to your absolutely fabulous video.
From UK been to Colorado several times love the Cumbres and Toltec, the Engineer for the Denver & Rio grand got the idea for the narrow gauge system was after he spent his honeymoon at the Ffestiniog railway in Wales, bet his new wife was impressed
Oops engineer was Palmer
It is remarkable that the very first known conveyance of passengers behind a steam locomotive had occurred 21 years earlier on Trevithick's Pen-y-Darren tramroad in South Wales. Trevithick's invention was completely unreliable but the concepts were sound and some 21 years later we had the first reliable steam hauled train. How exciting it must have been to have been living at that time!
Another first for Merthyr.... Along with Adrian Stephens' steam whistle!
Not if you were a coal miner. It was awful.
@@garryferrington811 Fair comment.
It is amazing how quickly the transformation caused by steel wheels on steel rails occurred. 1825 the S&D started. 1829 the L&M - common carrier travel, the 'Rocket'. 1869 the Transcontinetal railway in the US and a person or goods could travel between the Atlantic and Pacific on a steam railway. This is the first time the Algorithm has brought me to your channel. I'm going to have to look up those L&M videos.
It rapidly made a big difference to human genetics, too.
Ehh, there were actually railways several centuries before, usually used at mines and with horses pulling carts along small sections of track.
It was the steam engine that made railways really take off
The first passenger Railway Station is at Heighington on the line, dating from 1827....it still survives albeit as an abandoned public house, but there are plans to restore it. 😁......you missed that one Ollie !
He missed the entire Locomotion museum in Shildon too, which is right next to spot of the line where Locomotion first departed with the first train hooked up to it
@6:35 There wouldn't be wooden sleepers, the rail chairs were directly bolted to the stones, like @11:34
Fabulous piece of work. The effort that went into this production is unbelievable.
Subscribed.
He's a real gem.
Australia's very first railway was located in Newcastle NSW, but it was not steam operated, it was a gravitational railway built in 1831 by the Australian Agricultural Company. - On 12 September 1854 the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company opened Australia's first steam railway line in Melbourne. The 2.5-mile (about four-kilometre) track went from Flinders Street Station to Sandridge, now known as Port Melbourne.
Thanks Ollie, great video. My wife works up the road from Phoenix Row, and I had no idea of its particular importance. I travel all over the North East with work and have sat out the 'station' building in Stockton so many times waiting for the traffic lights to change! I'll look upon it with renewed interest next time 😊
Aw amazing! Glad you found it useful 🙂
Well done, great research and little. I knew most of this but thanks for putting i together.
What I enjoy most about your excursions is the connections between English history and American: the differences and similarities. in 1825 the Erie Canal was completed, which connected the large east coast ports, especially New York, with the Great Lakes and the raw materials of the Midwest, and even the huge coal deposits of western Pennsylvania. As with that first rail line, when developed to full potential, the effect on world trade would eventually be enormous, not to mention the spread of national culture into the far reaches of the two empires. 1825 is quite a pivotal year.
The iron trusses of the Gaunless Bridge were kept and are to displayed at Shildon, also I think a new bridge is to be installed between the historic abutments as part of a cycle way.
My granddad joined the North Eastern Railway as an apprentice fireman in 1909 at Newport Shed. In 1928 he became a locomotive driver and moved to Saltburn Shed, where he stayed until retiring in 1961, having made the change from steam to diesel. He must have known the track to Darlington-Stockton like the back of his hand.
the original Locomotion No 1 is preserved at Shildon and it has been confirmed that she (or most likely her replica) will be restored back to working order in time of the Bicentennial of the S&D
This is my hometown. I haven’t seen this place in forever.
I love the way you embrace the subject and have a real passion for the history. Your videos are great and informative about bygone times.
So nice of you. Glad you like them!
Interesting video, although you missed an opportunity to explain why the original trackway used separate stone "sleepers" rather than full width wood as is used today. This was done because the original rail wagons were pulled by a horse, and the separate sleepers gave the horse a smooth surface to walk on. In addition, since standard coal wagons were used, they did not have flanged wheels, so the first trackway incorporated an angle shaped rail. The original rail spacing was 4 feet 8 inches because of using existing coal wagons, which were sized (similar to Roman chariots) to accommodate two horses side by side. Ultimately, the 4 feet 8 inch spacing became 4 feet 8- and one-half inches, the "standard" rail gauge used today.
Now this "standard gauge" information is a real find. My family has been in the U.S. railroad business since its inception and we were always told that the standard gauge was patterned after the chariot ruts in ancient Pompeii.
Please also see footnote on track gauge on p.81 of Tomlinson's North Eastern Railway (1967 reprint)
In Wales Richard Trevithick was the first to build a steam train on the 21st of February in 1804 to pull horse drawn coal wagons loaded with iron and 70 passengers from Merthyr Tydfil iron works along the Penytorren Tramroad to the Navigation Yard in Abercynon where the iron was loaded on to barges that went down the carnal to Cardiff and it was followed by a a load of coal a few days later which was earlier than the event you are speaking of in England in 1825.
Did you read the title? First PASSENGER railway.
Excellent video.Again coming from County Durham,its was amazing to hear the story and see some of the remains of the railway route!
Glad you enjoyed it! :)
I read the title and you are wrong
From a country that invented the railways, and subsequently sold the concept of them to the rest of the world.........to a country that can no longer build new railway lines - is a monumental decline. My, how far we've fallen as a country. Tragic.
Truly great research gone into your program here Ollie. The maps and the photographs plus finding parts of this earliest system have made this very enjoyable, indeed. Many thanks for this production.
What a great video. I was born and grew up in Etherley and, as kids, we used to play on the old track bed next to Pheonix Row. Also walked the track through Greenfields and Brusselton to Shildon many times. Thanks for such a well produced film.
Great video, thanks! I was raised in Stockton-on-Tees and remember having a project to do at school for the. 150th anniversary in 1975. I just went to the museum (in the original ticket office on the right of the block you filmed) and copied down all the writing in the museum! Probably got a really crap mark. By the way I understand the reason the building wasn't used or developed as some sort of souvenir or continued as a museum was that it is now used as a charitable home for blokes.
Thanks Ollie for doing this. I thought the original railway was incorporated into the modern network, but in reality it was not. On the the whole a very interesting and informative documentary. Thanks for doing this for us. The research and preparation must have taken a bit of time - Regards - RC
Parts of it was integrated into the modern network.
When steam power married rail, that is when modernity started. Yes, there was steam power elsewhere, wind and water mills, but this is the match that lit the candle that started the Industrial Revolution full tilt. It was the synergy of steel, coal, and steam. TY for posting. This is an important place.
This is fascinating! I live in Forest Hall about a five minute walk from the old pit in Killingworth and about five minutes walk from "The George Stephenson museum" which was his house where he lived and worked on "The rocket"
We still have the old coal train tracks as public spaces and walkways called "Wagon ways" They're a beauty to be in.
This line you're walking looks beautiful to walk. Great to know you can walk it! Thanks!
Continued success!
Thanks so much, that's so nice to hear 😊
Love the brick engine at 17:42!
Interesting that the fish bellied rail sections are evident in your video. There were so many parallels occurring outside of Plymouth. The Plymouth Dartmoor Railway that was meant to bring products like granite from Dartmoor and lime up onto the moor to neutalise the acid soils. That was between 1812 to 1820. It was horse drawn and steam trains did not appear some 30 years later on a parallel purpose built modern railway track. Bearing in mind, there were arguments as to whether the standard gauge or the wider GWR guage should be the standard.
Thanks for the detailed video.
Absolutely brilliant, thank you so much for posting. Please be sure to cover the Bicentenary of the line in two years time for those who cannot make it. I haven't been up for a few years, and it is good to see all the rebuilding going on. The area around Skerne bridge look so much better now.
I think this is your finest mini-documentary to date and it shows in the fact that only a short time after this was published it is already one of your most popular videos
Thanks very much, that's a top class comment right there 😀
Great video. You have found a very rare picture of the Tees Bridge when you said about it being extended to Middlesbrough. The picture shows the Bridge when it was electrified. Not well known that two short parts of the S&D were electrified between 1915 and 1935
There are 2 sections of the original line abandoned between Darlington S&D crossing and the section from eaglesciffe 4to bowesfield which was a few hundred yards to the east of the present line
Cheers Russ
I did not know that, so thank you!
@@BeeHereNowukyes the frontmost tree covered strip of land at the front of Preston Park is the original alignment, they moved it away from the Manor house grounds
Although the S and D was the frist line to carry passengers, the south hetton line was the first to use only steam power, also designed by Stephenson in 1822
I love that photo of old 54. The engineer and fireman (shoveling coal) are very dandy in their top hats and tails! And all of those folks in the wagons appear to be amidst absolute chaos. How fun!
18.23..... In 1936 my mum worked in there ( junior typist ). She was quite proud to have been employed in the place where "the first train tickets were sold" ( o.k.... she always was a bit of a fantasist ) but I never paid it much heed, always hurrying on to get to Stockton market.
Now I'll bookmark this to the family archive, in case any of the grandkids want to pick up their connection with the history of the world. Thank you.
The first ticket office in Stockton is now a hostel for the homeless
Excellent video but I have a few little niggles about the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) being portrayed as a great innovator.
The first public passenger railway was the Swansea & Mumbles Railway of 1807. Trains were pulled by horses but, as the video says at 19:40, passenger traffic on the S&DR was also pulled by horses. The S&DR inaugural train was the exception and not the rule.
I consider Richard Trevithick's "Catch Me Who Can" show of 1808 as more like a fairground attraction than a working railway. It did, however, haul passengers around a loop using a steam engine.
The first railway to use steam locomotives (other than as experiments) was the Middleton Railway in 1812.
As I see it, the S&DR was the next step in an evolution. It was longer than most of the railways that preceded it and it had some smaller innovations (eg first iron railway bridge). Calling it the "first steam powered passenger line" I think is a bit of a stretch.
Given the winding engines were also powered by steam (as the winding ones for some of the inclines at Middleton were when the locomotives were indisposed/prior), I think the title is correct. Strictly Middleton was a private railway (unlike the surrey iron railway - which was public line but not mechanically hauled nor passenger) when created and although passengers may have been unofficially transported in coal trucks I think we have to recognise that the haulage of dedicated and improvised carriages and trains of passengers at Stockton and Darlington gives it a first. The presenter queries the sale of tickets etc, presumably for persons without their own carriage at Stockton. I would imagine they would be few in number as travel to Darlington/Shildon was the limit and most people would not have money, or inclination, to make the trip. Was there also the problem of passenger carriages really slowing done / blocking the trains of the (more profitable?) coal and other goods trains ?
The first steam operated passenger raiway was Canterbury-Withstable, but it had an incline with fixed steam engines too. It was opened in May 1830.
Born and bred in Stockton and it's the one thing we have. We're going to hold on to it as best we can however contrived it may be!
FFS, the first time a steam locomotive was used to pull a passenger train from one town to another along iron railway lines was on 27 Sep 1825 when 'Locomotion' made the first journey from Darlo to Stockton (in 3 hours 7 minutes) on the Stockton & Darlington railway.
@@wobblywibbler6664 You said "from Darlo to Stockton". The first train went from Shildon (which at that time was only a village) to Stockton. The route skirted around Darlington but did not go in. I would say it went from a village to a town.
Besides, if you are just including single trips then Richard Trevithick's "Pen-y-Darren" hauled a train from Penydarren (Merthyr Tydfil) to Abercynon on 21st February 1804. In the wagons were "10 tons of Iron and 70 men". It was painfully slow but it got there in the end.
Fascinating history that then spanned the whole world, something to be proud of 👍🇬🇧
Fascinating history, indeed. My family lived way down south in Kent County. The family rode the trains in 1870 as they emigrated to Genesee County on the corner of Bristol and Duffield Roads in Michigan. They left England on the PSS Edith arriving in NY.
Another excellent video Ollie some interesting facts and shots along the line I have not seen before. Keep these railway history videos coming .
Another excellent industrial heritage video. Stockton-darlington railway was always just a date in my history notes at school ( I was taught by people without any soul ! ) Thanks for bringing it to life !
Aw thanks very much!
Excellent video!
Greetings from the Netherlands 🇳🇱.
Great stuff Ollie! I always look forward to your work. Bravo!
Much appreciated Jimmy! Glad you liked it!
The Gaunless bridge appears to be in the car park of the National Railway Museum at York. Perhaps it is time it was returned…
Another quality production as always mate.
Much appreciated amigo
Superb Ollie, love your stuff. The old carriage shed near Darlington North Road station was where, only a few years ago, 60163 Tornado, the first new build British mainline steam locomotive since 1960 was built.
Absolutely superb . Many thanks
I Find it Incredible that the UK does not restore at least part of the line and have some sort of working train as a tourist attraction and a living tribute to a transport breakthrough that literally changed time and ushered in the modern world. It is that significant!!
I'm a proud Stockton lad . An amazing town with amazing people. And full of history. Great video my friend. Thank you 😊
A cracking video and I much appreciate your enthusiasm and passion for the subject. You're a man after my own heart!
Great to see you spreading your wings broader than the North West. I have been interested and worked or the railway for 40 years but never understood where and how the Stockton and Darlington worked. I do now. You have a real talent and are better than most if not all of the you tube competition in this field. Please do more like this.
Great video and thoroughly enjoyable.
History like this needs to be preserved.
You say that the first locomotive on this railway was named LOCOMOTION No 1; and that is the accepted history. But that engine carried no name or number in its early days; and Samuel Smiles, in his biography of George Stephenson published in 1857 - just nine years after George's death and 30 years after the opening of the line - states at least twice that the engine used on the line from day one was locomotive number 1 named "ACTIVE." So is that not curious?
Excellent video. Love your passion for industrial history. From that random guy who bumped into you at the railway garden bridge in Manchester a few weeks ago!
Hey thanks very much mate. It was lovely to meet you! I'm glad you like them and I hope you had a good rest of your trip to Manchester!
Great video, nice amount of detail too.
Fantastic video - again! You manage to find really interesting topics and present your research in a great way. Keep em coming!
Thank you very much! Very kind of you
Really enjoyed your presentation. So informative. Thank you for all your hard research and production.
Really enjoyed this, good stuff 👍
Excellent presentation thank you
Excellent video presentation. What a journey!
Nice one - thanks for this
Great history marvellously presented . Thank you Ollie
Great video!
Very interesting. Thank you!
Excellent. Thank you.
As ever, a really well-researched and well-presented video
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪.
Fascinating. Thank you.
Very well shot and edited. You have a natural talent for documentaries and presentation. Subscribed! I'm so jealous of people who get to live in a place with so much history to explore.
Excellent programme Sir thank you
Both my parents were born in a village that the original Stockton to Darlington railway ran through and I walked the line before it was ripped up and completely turned into a walking track. I've lived in Australia since 1968 but I was there twice, the last time being around 1980 and I saw the Rocket replica on Darlington station, probably no longer there. It's a shame to see what they've done to an iconic moment in history.
Absolutely fantastic video! 👌🌟😎
Great video, very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
keep up the great historical work.
Well done. Thanks.
An excellent and informative exploration of this historic railway. Thank you for sharing your adventure. Subscribed🙂👍
Good video explaining parts that I had not known. Subscribed
Great video, Thanks
Thanks Ollie. Fascinating stuff as always.
My pleasure! Thank you for watching it :)
Thanks for sharing this most interesting tale. Great detail
Thank you for this engaging production. I learned a lot I didn't know. Appreciated as well is the information contained in the comments your video generated.
Lovely film . Very informative and entertaining. Thanks for effort that must have been required. Loved it .
Brilliant! Thank you
Great vid Ollie - really enjoyed every minute. Now I know where to be in a couple o' years!
Smashing video!
Excellent
Thank you, Informative, interesting and well done.
Really enjoyed your video. I love Great Britain, it seems everywhere you look there's history to be discovered. Best wishes from the US.
really enjoyed that. those stone sleepers were amazing
Just watched this.
Fantastic! I'm passionate about industrial archeology but especially the railways.
Subbed. 😊
Great upload & video mate
Thank you 👍
Great story and great presentation. Thank you.
Great video, very interesting. Thank you very much, Ollie ❤
I love history and found this video very informative and enjoyable to watch. Thank you for producing this video! Regards, Nic
Lovely brass band sounds at start and finish. Superb bookends.
Brilliantly produced and researched. Many many hours went in to this. I loved it, it gave me food for thought for how I produce my own videos. I love constructive feed back, hope you do too, it helps me evolve. A couple of the captions especially at the start could have been shown a second or too longer, I could not read or take in all the info they portrayed before they disappeared. One in particular at the very start, showing where the line started, I had to stop the video and try and work out what you were referring too. May be a finger or pen directing us to what you were referring to in the commentary would have helped. These are not criticisms, just feedback to be constructive. One of the projects I have in mind to do is East Indiamen, the 18th century sailing ships that carried good from India and China to and from Britain. I will reflect a lot on what I have learnt here from you today. Thank you, for a superb job done.