I'd planned a day out today using last week's #NorthernRail sale to celebrate #Rail200: up the Settle & Carlisle, across to Newcastle, then back down the East Coast to home. But my #CrossCountry train to get to the start was cancelled and I couldn't make it.
Northern refused to change my tickets because their train was on time. Said I had to buy new ones at full price (with the sale finished, that's ~£60 instead of £4).
Conversely, #LNER refunded me the full £23 with no problems.
…My instinct is that, because we are on a rail road of growth, we will explore every possible branch line of magical thinking before taking Kris seriously
The UK is trumpeting #rail200: the 200th anniversary of the railway. As @markhburton points out, that’s a bit premature: https://mstdn.social/@markhburton/113803780435711720
But I want to re-up Kris de Dekker’s lens.
If we were serious about constructing a low carbon economy, we’d acknowledge, soberly, that we have a steel problem:
“The global iron and steel industry consumes more energy and produces more carbon emissions than any other industry.”
Some notes from Kris’s excellent analysis follow…
2025 is being celebrated as the 200th anniversary of the birth of the passenger railway. A bit premature, although there was a one-off excursion on the Stockton and Darlington railway, with passengers traveling on coal wagons, the regular passenger service from 1825-1830 used horse-drawn coaches. In 1830, the Liverpool Manchester railway opened, the first connecting 2 cities and the first scheduled passenger service. Stockton and Darlington Railway - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway #rail200
The locomotive we see today at the museum is actually a not-particularly-accurate reconstruction of that engine that was made in 1857 in order to put on display on a plinth at the Stockton & Darlington Railway. There’s very little of the original engine surviving, the boiler having exploded in 1827.
The date is widely hailed as the first steam-hauled passenger railway in England, which widely dismisses the fact that whilst the railway line was used for passenger services after that, it remained horse-drawn until 1834, as steam was reserved exclusively for hauling coal until then.
There’s a great 16 minute myth-busting video by Andrew McLean, curator of the National Railway Museum, up on YouTube: https://youtu.be/pP44h0CduWY
So, today is mostly symbolic. But all anniversaries of this type generally are, and we can definitely say it was the first trip on the Stockton & Darlington railway. And, well, as symbols go, it’s as good as any to fixate on. So, happy 200 years!
200 years ago today, at roughly 9am, between 450 and 600 people boarded 21 waggons with seats on them at Brusselton, County Durham, England. There were also 8 coal and one flour Waggon attached to the train, and Experiment, a closed carriage.
This train was hauled by a steam engine built by Timothy Hackworth and James Kennedy, engineers at the Robert Stephenson and Co. factory in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. At the time, it had no designation, but it was given number 1 by 1827, and was named “Locomotion” sometime around 1833.
This engine proceeded to haul the train to Darlington over the next two hours, with two stops, one due to a broken waggon, and the other for some minor repairs to the engine. It reached a peak speed of 15mph, and averaged 8mph on that trip if you discount the time needed for repairs.
This is widely considered to be a turning point for the railways, as the first steam-hauled passenger train in England, and is being celebrated for that today. #SDR200 #Rail200
Trantion
Jonathan Schofield
Mark Burton
Moof! @ OpenTransport2025