Early Railways in England

The bicentenary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which opened on 27 September 1825, is an opportunity to re-evaluate what we know of the development of the railway in England up to that date, and more specifically how knowledge and understanding have evolved since 2017, when the present author and Sir Neil Cossons were commissioned by Historic England to review the existing state of knowledge and to summarise the current state of understanding.

A review of research

The purpose of the 2017 review was to indicate future priorities for research and publication and to offer guidance on potential designation.

It offered an ambitious set of recommendations, which included creation of a comprehensive record of early railway remains in England, proposals for designation, an assessment of sites at risk, including priorities for action, and an authoritative book- length publication on early iron railways, up to and including the Stockton and Darlington, informed by the results of the proposed survey but international in scope.

Although so far it has not been possible to inaugurate a national project to create a record of early railway remains, research has been carried out on early stations on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, establishing their function, dates of construction and the evolution of this site- type within the context of passenger transport facilities by road, river and canal. Eric Branse-Instone, and Caroline Hardie will present their findings at the Early Railways Conference to be held in Darlington in September 2025, highlighting their significance and role in the evolution of the idea of the railway station as a building type nationally.

Key publications since 2017

Two book-length studies have since addressed the history of railways in this period in broad terms. Derek Hayes’ The First Railways: Atlas of Early Railways (The Times, Harper Collins, 2017) is a well- illustrated large-format hardback volume which sets out their development from the seventeenth century Shropshire colliery systems to the early years of locomotive haulage, in Britain, the USA and continental Europe.

The present author’s The Coming of the Railway: A New Global History, 1750-1850 (Yale University Press, 2023) covers a shorter time-span, though it extends well into the classic steam main line era. It demonstrates that practice in other countries initially reflected British experience but soon evolved in ways that suited local circumstances and needs. It also shows that understanding of English railway practice from 1790 to 1830 needs particularly to be compared to, and contrasted with, what was taking place in the fast-industrialising areas of South Wales at this same time.

Dr Michael Lewis’ Steam on the Sirhowy Tramroad and its Neighbours (Railway and Canal Historical Society, 2020) is a fascinating study of a system in south-east Wales that was for a while the most extensive in the world, and which made early use of steam traction, public ownership and passenger transport. It sets out how Wales’s transport needs were different from those of England, involving more challenging terrain and carrying iron and limestone as well as coal, but also shows that strong links existed between railway-builders in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire on the one hand and Northumberland and Durham on the other, not least through the Quaker community, and confirms that these two different regions were informed about each other’s technical capacity and developments.

A number of other authors have also recently published on what we might call the transitional period, the ten years or so between the opening of the Stockton and Darlington in 1825 and the general acceptance that railways, not turnpikes or canals, offered the best prospect for a national transport system.
One such is Anthony Dawson, author of a number of studies, including Rainhill Trials (2018), Before Rocket: The Steam Locomotive up to 1829 (2020) and The Liverpool and Manchester Railway: An Operating History (2020).

Michael Bailey’s Built in Britain: The Independent Locomotive Manufacturing Industry in the Nineteenth Century (2021) begins with the first exports of railway items in the 1820s, and Robert F. Hartley’s ‘The Master of these Marvels’ – George Stephenson and his Circle of Genius (2024) provides a punchy, well-researched account of one of the most remarkable figures in British history.

Conferences and papers

Since 2017 the transitional period and the early years of the successor steam railway have received more attention than earlier years. The quadrennial International Early Railways Conferences are dedicated to the study of ‘railways which were pre-main line in concept if not necessarily in date’. However of the eighteen papers published in the proceedings of the 2021 gathering , the only one to consider any aspect of the pre-1830 period was Michael Bailey and Peter Davidson’s study of the two ‘Killingworth’ locomotives, Billy and the Hetton Lyon . The same authors will shortly be publishing a study of the Stockton & Darlington’s Locomotion No 1 in association with the National Railway Museum and will be presenting their findings at the Darlington conference.

Dr Bailey has also recently completed a report on a 1:12th-scale 1812-built model of a Murray/Blenkinsop locomotive contemporary with those adopted for the Leeds-Middleton colliery line using a rack and pinion system. Dr Ron Fitzgerald is currently preparing his research on the Middleton for publication, and is also undertaking work on some very early models. Much remains to be learnt from contemporary models, some of which reside in collections outside the United Kingdom.

The Darlington conference in September will have a heavy focus on early railways, including a re-evaluation of the Stockton and Darlington and papers on early railways in Scotland, Wales, continental Europe and Asia.

Characterising developments in early railways

It is of course important that we should understand how the earlier phases of the railway in England should have made possible the Stockton & Darlington and its successors. We can certainly approach the bicentenary with a clear sense of how they fit in to the broader patterns of technical, social and political development which took place in the generation after Waterloo but it is also critical not lose sight of the fact that those which predate the Stephensons’ innovative railway from the Durham coalfield to the river Tees are important in their own right, not simply as a means to understand how this particular system came into being.

Conclusion

The many hundreds of miles of railway which existed before 1825 had already transformed England’s landscape, economy and society in the tumultuous early years of the industrial revolution. As the 2017 report pointed out, characterising the earliest as ‘simple railways’, with their rudimentary organic components and unidirectional traffic, and later ones as ‘hybrid (experimental) railways’ exhibiting some modern characteristics provides a convenient and helpful form of categorisation but runs the risk of reducing them to a curtain-raiser.

We now have a much better understanding of the options which engineers could adopt when they came to build or modernise these systems understanding which can inform designation priorities and Heritage Action Zones. However, the 2017 review and the present focus on early railways indicate the need for more research to provide evidence for conservation and protection policies through greater and more detailed understanding. More remains to be discovered, and the Research agenda for the early British railway produced by Helen Gomersall and Andy Guy in 2010 remains highly relevant.

The opening of the Stockton and Darlington is undoubtedly an important point in the railway’s coming of age, when it shed many of its ‘simple’ characteristics but also moved beyond its experimental phase to offer a mature technology suitable for the first generation of main lines. As such the bicentenary is an appropriate time to reflect on these changes, just as in four years’ time we will go on to focus on the Rainhill trials, and the year following on the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester itself – as well as on its transatlantic cousin, the Baltimore & Ohio.

Further information

Bailey M, 2021: Built in Britain: The Independent Locomotive Manufacturing Industry in the Nineteenth Century

Bailey M, Davidson P 2022: ‘Learning through archaeology: Killingworth Billy and Hetton Lyon.’ Early Railways 7, 65-104. Early Railways Conference Committee.

Cossons N, Gwyn D 2017: Early Railways: Review and Summary of Recent Research; Historic England Research Reports Series 25/2017

Dawson A, 2018: Before Rocket: The Steam Locomotive up to 1829. Gresley.

Dawson A, 2020: The Liverpool and Manchester Railway: An Operating History. Pen and Sword Transport.

Dawson A, 2021: Locomotives of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Pen and Sword Transport.

Dawson A, 2022: Rainhill Men: Railway Pioneers. Amberley Publishing.

Dawson A, 2023: The Planet and Samson Locomotives: Their Design and Development. Pen and Sword Transport.

Gwyn D, 2023: The Coming of the Railway: A New Global History, 1750-1850 Yale University Press.

Hartley RF, 2024: ‘The Master of these Marvels’ – George Stephenson and his Circle of Genius. The Railway and Canal Historical Society.

Hayes D, 2017: The First Railways: Atlas of Early Railways. The Times, Harper Collins.

Lewis M, 2020: Steam on the Sirhowy Tramroad and its Neighbours. Railway and Canal Historical Society.

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