The Stockton and Darlington Railway was the first public railway in the world to use steam locomotives. This will be celebrated across the UK throughout 2025 via a series of events collectively named Railway 200.
This article offers background details of that time, and examines contributions from Wales that also impacted railway history. The second part will examine early Welsh tramroads, the remarkable Swansea and Mumbles Railway, and Woodhams scrapyard at Barry.
The featured image above is a painting by John Dobbin, held at Darlington Railway Museum and sourced via Tees Valley Museums. It shows Locomotion 1 pulling wagons full of coal, flour – and, for the first time, people – across Skerne Bridge, one of the world’s first railway bridges. Dobbin was about 10 when he was there, painting this 50 years later from sketches made by his father, and possibly from his memories.
A train of events
On 27 September 1825, George Stephenson’s steam-powered Locomotion 1 travelled 26 miles (42 km) between Shildon and Stockton, carrying hundreds of passengers, to great fanfare. That journey of two hours set in motion a train of events that changed the world forever.
This was the culmination of almost 300 years of railway development in Britain. It started in the 1560s, when miners from Austria were brought over to build the first railways. These were small, man-powered, underground railways for mining that were common across Europe but unknown in Britain. They were only used to move minerals to the surface.
Britain was the first to experiment with surface railways in the early 17th century, typically moving minerals from mines to ships. Both carriages and rails were wooden, but the later-18th century saw the introduction of iron components, first as strips on top of wooden rails, then iron rails and wheels.
Those developments also saw a divergence between the two rail types. Like today’s railways, edge rails were solid bars, with a retaining flange on the wheel rather than the rail. By comparison, plateways had L-shaped rails, so the rail also acted as the flange, and the wheels were plain. Plateways were widespread and offered flexibility in construction and operation, making them popular in many regions. We still use the term ‘platelayer’ for people who lay railway tracks, though plateways ceased to be used long ago.
When the Stockton and Darlington Railway was constructed, the great engineer George Stephenson won the argument to use edge rails, and the 4’8½” (1.44m) gauge he was familiar with from his colliery work.
In 1829, he consolidated this position by winning the Rainhill Trials. He went on to build the Liverpool and Manchester Railway to the same specifications. His gauge became known as the Standard Gauge, used worldwide by around 55% of railways. However, other regions operated plateways and different gauges long after this time. And from 1838–1892, Wales used Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s broad gauge of 7’0¼” (2.14m) for mainline transport.
George Stephenson is rightly remembered as the visionary whose locomotives set the design standard for years to come, establishing the edge rail system and Standard Gauge used today. The Rocket, which won the Rainhill Trials, has achieved iconic status. Many people believe it was the first steam locomotive. But that was built in Wales 25 years earlier, where many railway developments were taking place.
The world’s first steam locomotive
By 1800, Britain was the world leader in surface railway development, ironmaking, and stationary steam engines. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to sit a steam engine onto a railway carriage and use its power to move along. That person was Richard Trevithick, a Cornish mining engineer.
He built his first steam vehicle in 1801 for road use, which ran successfully. The following year, the Coalbrookdale Company in Shropshire built a steam locomotive for him, but there’s no evidence this actually ran. In 1802, he built a high-pressure steam engine to drive a hammer at the Penydarren Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil.
With the assistance of ironworks employee Rees Jones and supervised by proprietor Samuel Homfray, Trevithick mounted the engine on wheels and turned it into a railway locomotive. The unnamed engine was built over the winter of 1803–1804 and first ran on 21 February 1804.
Riding the rails
The world’s first steam railway journey was a wager between Homfray and Richard Crawshay, owner of the nearby Cyfarthfa ironworks. Each placed 500 guineas on whether the engine could haul 10 tons of iron to Abercynon, nine-and-a-quarter miles (16 km) away, and haul the empty wagons back.
In Trevithick’s own words: “[Y]esterday we proceeded on our journey with the engine, and we carried ten tons of iron in five wagons, and seventy men riding on them the whole of the journey … the engine, while working, went nearly five miles an hour; there was no water put into the boiler from the time we started until our journey’s end … the coal consumed was two hundredweight.”
A sheared bolt caused the boiler to leak, delaying return until the following day. Despite this, the engine worked, and the age of the steam locomotive was born in Wales.
The track was a plateway, but the engine’s weight was too heavy for the rails, necessitating stops to replace the broken plates. This was an indicator of the eventual demise of the plateway as a suitable platform for steam locomotives, though they were used for many years.
After further journeys, the engine was repurposed as a stationary engine driving a forge hammer at the Penydarren Works. Sadly, it was later broken up.
William Stewart and Newport
Despite building more locomotives, Trevithick couldn’t advance his plans commercially, and others took the lead. These included John Blenkinsop in Yorkshire, William Burton on the River Wear, William Chapman, and the partnership of William Hedley, John Forster, and Timothy Hackworth on Tyneside.
The trio built Puffing Billy in 1814, to haul coal wagons from the mine at Wylam to docks at Lemington, Northumberland. It was in service for 48 years and is the world’s oldest surviving steam locomotive, now resident at the Science Museum in London.
A lesser-known figure was William Stewart, an enigmatic figure originally from Scotland who, with his partner John Ramsdin, operated a business in Newport as ‘engineers and millwrights’. In 1814, he built a locomotive for the Parkend Coal Company in the Forest of Dean and delivered it to Lydney. A dispute over finance and terms stalled the project, and Stewart returned the engine to Newport.
Two years later, he approached the Monmouthshire Canal Company regarding another “steam engine intended for the purpose of hauling Carts or Waggons on Rail Roads or Turnpike Roads”. It’s unclear whether the steam engine he was “engaged in making” was the one from Lydney or a new one, and there’s no evidence this proposal progressed. What’s interesting is the reference to “hauling Carts or Wagons on Rail Roads or Turnpike Roads”, mimicking the ideas of Trevithick just over a decade earlier.
The proposal didn’t progress, and in October 1816 he submitted a different one to the people of Newport to construct a steamship to carry goods and passengers. This also came to nothing.
It’s unclear where Stewart learnt his engineering skills. Although he referred to the Parkend project of 1814, he later claimed he “knew nothing at that time of Mr Stevenson’s more successful attempts”. Newport might have become an early manufacturing centre for railway locomotives and steamships if he’d enjoyed more success. We can only wonder.
