The first public steam railway

The story

Wagons on iron rails

In English mines, since the 17th century, wagons on wooden tracks, pulled by horses, had been used to move coal: on rails a wagon ran far more easily than on a road, and a horse could pull a much heavier load. In time the wooden tracks were replaced by iron ones. After the invention of Watt's steam engine, it was natural to think of a steam engine that moved by itself along the rails, in place of horses.

A Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick, built the first steam locomotive on rails in 1804: in Wales it pulled five wagons carrying ten tonnes of iron and seventy men. It worked, but it was so heavy that it broke the iron rails of the time, and it was abandoned. Other inventors made attempts, but the results were poor.

The miner who became an engineer

George Stephenson was born in 1781 at Wylam, near Newcastle, the son of a mine worker who could not read. As a child he took cows to graze and worked in a mine. At eighteen, when he still could not read or write, he went to night school to learn, and began to study how steam engines worked: he knew them well, because he worked as an attendant on one. He became the best mechanic in the area, and in 1814 he built his first locomotive, the “Blücher”, to haul coal in a mine.

Stockton and Darlington

In the north-east of England, between the coal mines and the port of Stockton, people wanted to build a railway line to carry coal. The promoter, a Quaker merchant from Darlington, Edward Pease, wanted to use horses, but he met Stephenson, who persuaded him to try locomotives. In 1823 a works was founded in Newcastle to build them, run by Stephenson and his son Robert.

On 27 September 1825 the Stockton & Darlington Railway was opened, the first public railway in the world run with steam locomotives, about forty kilometres long. Thousands of people gathered along the route. At the head of the train was the locomotive, driven by the Stephenson brothers (George directed the enterprise), called “Locomotion No. 1”: behind it came 12 wagons of coal and flour, and also some open wagons carrying about six hundred passengers. A man on horseback, with a flag, went ahead of the convoy for the first few kilometres, but then the locomotive overtook him: it reached about fifteen to twenty kilometres an hour. It was an enormous speed for those days.

For the local people it was a sight they had never seen: many had never come across a machine that moved by itself, with no animals to pull it, and they watched it with curiosity, enthusiasm and a little fear.

The Rocket

Five years later, in 1830, the line between Liverpool and Manchester, two great industrial cities, was opened, with steam locomotives and a fixed timetable: the first truly modern railway. Before the opening, in October 1829, a competition was held at Rainhill to choose the best locomotive. The “Rocket”, built by Stephenson and his son Robert, won, reaching about fifty kilometres an hour. But there was a serious accident on the very day of the opening: a Member of Parliament, William Huskisson, fell onto the tracks and was run over, and died: he was the first famous victim of a railway accident.

Italy on the tracks

In Italy the first railway was opened on 3 October 1839, between Naples and Portici, a little over seven kilometres long, built at the wish of the king of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand II. In 1840 the Milan–Monza line opened, and then others, all over the peninsula. By unification, in 1861, there were about two thousand kilometres of track; in 1871 the Fréjus tunnel was opened, under the Alps, between Italy and France.