How previous generations celebrated the first passenger rail journey

Momentum is gathering for next year’s ‘Railway 200’. Richard Foster looks at how previous anniversaries celebrated the railway’s birth.

In this article:

• Past anniversaries featured grand parades, exhibitions, and public events, such as the 1925 locomotive cavalcade and the 1975 Shildon steam display.
• Celebrations in 1925 and 1975 left lasting legacies, including the creation of railway museums and historic collections.
• These events showcased both the history and progress of railways, merging nostalgia with modern advancements in the industry.

What would you do if you saw a UFO? Use your phone to film it? At a push, you’d try to draw it. Words wouldn’t be able to do justice to what you’ve just seen.

That’s how 14-year-old John Backhouse must have felt on September 27 1825 (without the phone, of course). He’d seen the Georgian equivalent of a UFO.

How else could he describe to his sister the experience of witnessing the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway?

Here was a mechanical horse, belching fire and smoke, moving faster than any flesh and blood beast, with a load way beyond its haulage capacity. Backhouse, naturally, had picked up a pencil…

If you were a miner before 1825, you might have seen a horse-powered plateway or waggonway. You were probably familiar with a steam engine, puffing away and pumping water from the bowels of the earth. But only a lucky few had seen a steam engine mounted on wheels.

September 27 1825 was therefore a watershed moment. After that, there were relatively few parts of the country - the world even - where you couldn’t see a steam locomotive.

To give an idea of how fast Britain’s railway network grew, there were 125 miles by the end of 1830, but 51 years later that had reached 13,000. It was 23,000 by 1914.

The Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830, was the prototype for the ‘modern’ railway - a direct line linking two major cities.

But it was the Stockton & Darlington Railway, opened from a coal pit near Bishop Auckland to the River Tees at Stockton, which had proved that the concept of a steam-powered railway worked.

It would change the world. In fact, Edward Pease (S&D promoter) and George Stephenson (its engineer) should be ranked alongside the likes of Thomas Edison, Robert Oppenheimer and Tim Berners-Lee, whose work has left an indelible mark on the human race.

That’s also the view of Rail Minister Lord Peter Hendy, who is championing what has been dubbed ‘Railway 200’.

Writing a year ago in RAIL 992, Hendy said: “From September 27 1825 the world transformed, and everything began to speed up. As the railway network spread, it began to democratise mass transport. It connected people and new communities began to develop, while the economy - driven by technological innovation and the ability to move goods and people quickly - boomed. [The railways led to a] global socio-economic boom maybe only rivalled by the spread of the internet.

“The railways have since become a part of popular culture and day to day life for many people around the world. They take us to amazing places, they commute us to work or to important life events, they provide a means for us to visit friends and families, and they have inspired inspirational works of literature, film, and art, for two centuries.”

The opening of the Stockton & Darlington has always been recognised as a significant event to celebrate and commemorate.

But ‘Railway 200’, its promoters expect, will be unique. It will be a year-long celebration - not a one-off event. And, fingers crossed, it will be celebrated across the country, rather than just in the North East.

That said, Darlington and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Councils have joined forces with Durham County Council to offer a nine-month programme of events across the region.

But what of those previous celebrations? What do ‘Railway 200’s’ organisers have to compete with?

The S&D expanded its network from 1830. Eventually, its tentacles reached Saltburn (on the coast), Consett (to the south-west of Newcastle), and across the Pennines to Penrith. But it was never financially secure, and in 1863 it was absorbed by the North Eastern Railway.

The NER recognised the S&D’s importance, when it organised a committee whose remit was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the S&D’s opening.

The committee first met on July 28 1875, and planned a five-pronged approach: a statue of Joseph Pease, the S&D’s first treasurer and the man who issued the prospectus, to be erected in Darlington; a portrait of Pease to be donated to Darlington Corporation; a banquet to be held on September 27; an exhibition of locomotives to be held at North Road Works; and on September 28, a series of tours and excursions to visit local areas of interest.

The statue still stands in High Row, Darlington. James Macbeth painted the portrait… but high winds threatened the banquet, and one commentator suggested that the NER’s Third Class rolling stock was no better than the waggons used on the opening day. Only the exhibition in North Road works was deemed a success.

By the time the 100th anniversary came around, Britain’s railways were in a very different state. The NER had become part of the London & North Eastern Railway, one of the ‘Big Four’ companies formed in the wake of the First World War… and the LNER had something special planned.

It organised a grand cavalcade of locomotives. Some would haul the very latest rolling stock. Others would pull trains with actors portraying key scenes from S&D history.

The parade took months to organise. It took place on July 2 1925, well ahead of the actual anniversary but timed to coincide with the International Railway Congress - the meeting of railway management that had gathered annually since 1885.

A grandstand was erected at milepost no. 6 on the Darlington-Eaglescliffe line, part of the route that George Stephenson’s Locomotion had traversed 100 years before.

The exhibits had been assembled at Stockton, and at 0954 Hetton Colliery 0-4-0 Lyon got under way. It passed the grandstand at 1055, with two porters with megaphones announcing its approach.

This really was a celebration of ‘now’ and ‘then’. The Great Western and Southern Railway showed off their latest rolling stock, hauled by their most modern locomotives. The LNER’s contribution ranged from the massive ‘U1’ Beyer Garratt No. 2395 to overhauling Locomotion.

New forms of motive power were on show, ranging from 2-Co-2 electric locomotive No. 13, a Sentinel steam railmotor, down to ex-NER petrol autocar No. 2105 and diminutive ex-NER railbus No. 130Y.

The majority of what took part in the procession would go on display at Faverdale Wagon Works (near Darlington), where they would join one of the greatest collections of motive power that had ever been gathered, in the UK.

The ‘Big Four’ had all contributed, while Belgium supplied two locomotives - 2-2-2ST Pays de Waes of 1844 and a replica of 2-2-2 La Belge, the country’s first locomotive but built to a Robert Stephenson design.

Ireland’s Great Southern Railways loaned No. 36, built in 1846 for the Great Southern and Western Railway.

A parade also formed the centrepiece of the 150th anniversary celebrations. This time, the action shifted west to Shildon, where the wagon works hosted a fine display of steam locomotives on August 24-30.

This culminated with the ‘Grand Steam Cavalcade’ on August 31, that ran between Shildon and Heighington. But this wasn’t just steam - a prototype HST and Metropolitan electric No. 12 Sarah Siddons took part, too, along with an all-new replica of Locomotion.

If the change between 1875 and 1925 had been great, those 50 years between 1925 and 1975 had witnessed even greater upheaval. The event was backed by a state-owned railway, and all the steam locomotives on display were in private hands.

If any organisation can attest to the positive publicity that a grand celebration can bring, it’s Transport for London.

In 2013, what started as an ambitious plan to run steam through the tunnels (to celebrate 150 years since the Metropolitan Railway opened) snowballed.

The platforms between Moorgate and Edgware Road were thronged with people eager for a glimpse of Metropolitan Railway 0-4-4T No. 1 and Sarah Siddons.

Suddenly, it seemed that every ‘big’ anniversary on the Underground was being marked by the appearance of a steam locomotive.

But the main line railway has a habit of shooting itself in the foot.

Remember the PR disaster that took place in 1985? BR announced that Swindon Works was to close… just as events to mark 150 years of the Great Western Railway in 1985 were kicking off.

The railway has been plagued by bad press in recent years. Government and the industry need to make sure that no ‘1985s’ happen in 2025.

Both 1925 and 1975 left important legacies. North Eastern Railway company servants, led by J. B. Harper, had started to collect memorabilia from both it and the S&D’s earliest days. This collection went on display at Faverdale in 1925. But what to do with it, along with the historic locomotives once the celebrations were over?

E. M. Bywell had the answer. An old workshop, close to the station, was transformed into a museum. This became an important sanctuary for other historical machines (the GWR’s City of Truro and the Stephenson Locomotive Society’s newly acquired LBSCR 0-4-2 Gladstone, to name but two).

1975 took this to another level. The 1968 Transport Act recognised that BR was looking after an ever-increasing collection of steam locomotives, only a portion of which could be displayed to the public. The Act resulted in BR working with the Science Museum to establish a national railway museum.

The old York North shed became the National Railway Museum, which (fittingly) opened on September 27 1975. By 2004, it had become the country’s most-visited museum outside London.

‘Railway 200’ is the first big opportunity for the 21st century railway to put on a big celebration, to show the people of the UK how great and innovative our railway is.

You might argue as to whether the current economic, political and social climates are conducive for celebration. But neither were they in 1975 (or 1925 for that matter) - and see what was accomplished then.

Hendy’s call - “consider what you can offer to the public in 2025 and beyond to excite and inspire a new generation of people” - is the right one.

Don’t let 2025 add further fuel to the ‘why can’t we do this stuff in Britain anymore?’ fire. We all know what wondrous things the rail industry can achieve when it puts its mind to it.