All aboard the ‘Nostalgia Express' — the world's first steam railway

Times

10-05-2025

By a roundabout near Betty's Fish Shop in the quiet town of Shildon in Co Durham, a small tourist information board rests in a clearing beside a path. This is where steam trains first took paying passengers on a public railway 200 years ago — a world first.
The old tracks are still there, running a short distance before ending abruptly on grass where residents walk their dogs. In the background, vehicles rev and honk towards Bishop Auckland. Other than that, chances are you will have this momentous spot in the history of human movement all to yourself — just as I do.
I'm here to travel from Shildon to Middlesbrough, tracing the original 1820s route of the 26-mile journey, via Darlington and Stockton, taking Northern services along the modern railway, while seeking out lesser-visited remnants of the old line in this hallowed train landscape. If you're a rail enthusiast in this bicentenary year — a charge to which I plead guilty — then this is a fitting pilgrimage, and a chance to wallow.
George Stephenson's groundbreaking Stockton & Darlington Railway, built primarily to haul coal from collieries near Shildon via Darlington to Stockton on the River Tees, had rolled forth from here, beginning at what was known as the Masons Arms Crossing, on September 27, 1825. The great self-made engineer himself had been at the controls of his beloved Locomotion No 1 — naturally — as the wheels of the Industrial Revolution began to spin.
Back then, as the train reached a heady 12mph, there had been great fanfare with more than 600 passengers squeezing on to rudimentary seats in wagons. The Masons Arms pub, across the street, was where the first paying passenger tickets were sold (now it's the closed-down Cape to Cairo restaurant, although you can just make out 'Masons' in faded letters on a wall).
The setting now has a ghostly feel. Before Stephenson, the land here had been 'a wet, swampy field — a likely place to find a snipe, or a flock of peewits', according to the surveyor John Dixon. Shildon's pub and much else — including staff housing for the trainworks, schools, shops and chapels — were to come, and the town's population was to soar from 100 in 1800 to 11,000 by 1900. Now it's down to 9,600 and Shildon — the world's first railway town, known as the 'cradle of the railways' — feels like a backwater again.
The truly devoted can take a detour a few miles out of town to the seminal (for train lovers) Brusselton Incline, a Georgian engineering marvel designed to haul coal uphill. It's little more than a windswept hill now with some stones marking the former tracks, set at a width of 4ft 8½in, now known as 'standard gauge'.
Yet train history is far from neglected in Shildon itself. A 20-minute stroll from Masons Arms Crossing, almost adjoining the mainline station, you come to the excellent Locomotion Museum, close to the site of the former Soho Works railway plant overseen by Timothy Hackworth, Stephenson's contemporary.
Locomotion is a revelation. Inside two vast, warehouse-like halls, presentation tracks are lined with shiny locos, including Locomotion No 1 (with its distinctive backwards-J chimney) and Stephenson's Rocket, built by George and his son Robert and used so famously on the Liverpool-Manchester line (free; locomotion.org.uk).
You can also see Experiment, the bulky carriage for bigwigs on the Stockton & Darlington Railway. And old 'night-ferry' carriages that were used to travel from London to Paris on specially designed ships, sit alongside locos from the 1890s that could touch 90mph and battered-looking 1960s mining locos. Displays explain how engineers from across the planet came to Hackworth's works in the early years to learn about advancements.
It is, in short, a glorious celebration of all things train — on a par with the National Railway Museum in York — yet little known to most. Even its café seats were once fitted on Eurostar carriages.
But it's time to move on. From Shildon the line winds 11 miles across countryside, past industrial yards and suburbs to Darlington. You are travelling along the original 1825 route and, about halfway, the true rail aficionado may wish to hop off at the almost derelict remains of Heighington, thought to be the world's first station.
Onwards from Heighington you cross Skerne Bridge over the River Skerne. This is said to be the world's first proper railway bridge, nicknamed locally as 'the five pound note bridge' (because it used to be on the back of a fiver).
After this excitement, Darlington station is a cavernous red-brick structure, dating from 1887 in its current form, and now in the middle of £140 million renovations. From there it's a pleasant amble back towards Skerne Bridge beyond an imposing market square, to the second railway museum of the day: Hopetown Darlington.
Set within North Road Station, dating from 1842, exhibits outline how Edward Pease, from a local Quaker family, had been key to backing George Stephenson, taking a chance on his newfangled steam locos despite many doubters. Crucially, Pease — instructed by altruistic Quaker beliefs — stipulated that his 26-mile railway would be for public use, not just coal wagons.
The museum houses railway paraphernalia galore, including a striking painting by the Darlington-born artist John Dobbin depicting crowds gathered by Skerne Bridge in 1825 to witness Locomotion No 1 chugging by. About 40,000 turned up for the spectacle.
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Moving on from Darlington to Stockton, you pass housing estates and countryside before arriving at Thornaby and changing for a short ride into the centre of town, with its nondescript station (just a couple of shelters and a footbridge).
Stockton was the original terminus of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which perhaps ought to have been called the Stockton and Shildon Railway but perhaps wasn't because Shildon was such a nonentity and the Quaker backers were Darlington-based. It's a down-to-earth market town now with a lovely art deco theatre — the Globe, where the Beatles played in 1963 on the day President Kennedy was assassinated — and a market with an unusual 'kinetic sculpture' devoted to its train history. At 1pm each day The Stockton Flyer, in the shape of Locomotion No 1, arises from a plinth near the town hall, emitting whistles and smoke before sinking back. The sculpture, unveiled in 2016, is by the artists Rob Higgs and Keith Newstead. Higgs bills it as a 'whimsical creation'. Yes, a wonderful one.
From Stockton, for those who want an extra history-of-trains thrill, it's 15 minutes to Middlesbrough along tracks that were created in 1830, as the colliery owners were already seeking deeper River Tees moorings. Middlesbrough then was little more than a scattering of abodes, yet by 1862 it was a hero of industrialisation, with William Gladstone calling it an 'infant Hercules', no less.
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Now, of course, it's a city with a population of about 140,000 and a fine gothic station (dating from 1877). All down to Stephenson's trains.
The true rail enthusiast may wish, after Middlesbrough, to continue down the line to Grosmont for a full dose of nostalgia on a steam train ride across the splendid rolling scenery of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. And why not? You've earned it. Two centuries on, so close to where the passenger steam trains began, they're still going strong. Toot-toot to that.Bannatyne Hotel Darlington has room-only doubles from £85 (bannatyne.co.uk); Leonardo Hotel Middlesbrough has room-only doubles from £66 (leonardohotels.co.uk). Tickets from Shildon to Middlesbrough, via Darlington and Stockton, from £10 (northernrailway.co.uk). One-day North Yorkshire Moors Railway rover tickets £49.50 (nymr.co.uk)
Tom Chesshyre is the author of Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides, published by Summersdale. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members