ONE tiny town in the middle of the countryside changed travel in the UK and around the globe forever.
Shildon in County Durham, is a quaint town that those passing through may assume is just another rural community.
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But Shildon was actually the world’s very first railway town, with the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives launching on September 27, 1825.
On the opening day 200 years ago, the train carried hundreds of people and reached speeds of up to 15mph.
Today, travellers can head to Locomotion, a museum in the town dedicated to rail history and home of the first train used on the world’s first public railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR).
The museum is completely free to enter and inside, visitors will find a collection of railway vehicles, including heritage carriages.
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One of the museum’s major attractions is Locomotive No. 1, which was the very first steam locomotive to pull a passenger train on the S&DR.
Other carriages and vehicles include Queen Alexandra’s
Royal Saloon car and the Advanced Passenger Train prototype, which was set to be a tilting train and helped the development of high speed trains across the globe.
In fact, the museum is home to the largest undercover collection of heritage railway vehicles in Europe.
For little ones, the museum also has a play area with wooden train sets in the main hall.
Outside the museum, visitors can explore the coal drops as well, these imposing structures with elevated railway tracks would be used to refuel the steam locomotives and load wagons with goods.
There is a railway garden and outdoor play area too.
After exploring all that the museum has to offer, you can head to the onsite cafe for a light bite or refreshment – which even has Eurostar seating.
In the early 19th century, Shildon was nothing but a few houses at a crossroads.
But thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of railways, the town soon became an important place for rail travel.
In early 1825, a brilliant but little-known engineer called Timothy Hackworth set up the Soho Works – where the Locomotion museum is today – and his designs made steam power reliable.
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As a result, he helped Shildon become the global centre for locomotive maintenance and manufacturing.
Then in September 1825, the very first steam train called Locomotive No.1 became the first to haul passengers, setting off from just outside the town’s Mason’s Arms pub.
In the early days of the S&DR, tickets were sold at the bar and between 1833 and 1841, a room in the pub was used as a booking office.
The S&DR stretches 27miles in total from the terminus in Shildon to another in Stockton.
Even though passengers can no longer ride along the original S&DR, they can walk or cycle along it.
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The S&DR Trail of Discovery has a number of paths and cycleways for the public to use and there are illustrated panels that tell the history of the historic railway line.
To celebrate 200 years since the launch of the S&DR, Locomotion is hosting a number of events including an exhibition named ‘Celebrating Railways: Past, Present and Future‘.
Shildon was also named as one of the most affordable places to live back in 2020, with houses costing just £60,000 – around a tenth of the price of houses in London.
The town is located 13miles from the city of Durham too, so isn’t far from all the benefits of a bustling city.
It is also a short drive from the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which is home to a wide variety of walks across open moorland.
UK’s last cinema carriage restored
A MOBILE cinema has been saved from crumbling away, with the possibility of showing movies on the move, in the future.
The final curtain nearly fell on a historic mobile cinema in Wiltshire, but it has been saved by a team of dedicated volunteers and the friends of a former British Transport Films employee who owned the carriage.
Inside, the carriage located at Swindon and Cricklade Railway features new panelling, has been rewired, repainted and a speaker system has been added.
Vintage seats were also salvaged from a cinema in Deptford, London, and placed inside the carriage.
In total, the carriage can seat 25 people and stands stationary – however, in the future film screenings could take place whilst the carriage is on the move.
Originally opened in 1975 by Princess Margaret, the carriage used to be part of a travelling exhibition train that celebrated 150 years of the modern railway.
The cinema coach then went on to screen training films for British Rail staff until 1988.
Martin Rouse, who led the volunteer renovators, said: “The coach could’ve been returned to passenger use, but so much history would’ve been lost.”
The ‘best of its kind in the world’ train museum has also reopened a major attraction after huge £11million revamp.
Plus, check out the UK’s largest train station that once had direct routes to Europe and now has a huge new Wetherspoons.
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