The first public steam railway
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Decisions, questions and your own progress, in the app
Locomotion No. 1 at Darlington · Chris55 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source page
The story
The Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in 1825, using George Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1 to pull coal wagons and passengers.
What happened next
Railways shrank distances. Journeys that took days by horse took hours by train, and countries adopted standard time so timetables would work.
Remember
- Britain was the first country to industrialise
- Steam engines were first used to pump water out of mines
- Most of the world’s railways use Stephenson’s track width, 1,435 mm
Review question
Whose locomotive pulled the first train on this railway?
Answer: George Stephenson. James Watt improved the steam engine decades earlier, but did not build railway locomotives.
Image credits
- Locomotion No. 1 at Darlington · Chris55 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source page
