Locomotion

About this place

On 27 September 1825 the first public passenger train in history set off from precisely this patch of ground, and Shildon, a town of about ten thousand people, calls itself, with justification, the world's first railway town. On the site of its old works stands Locomotion, the northern outpost of the National Railway Museum in York, and entry costs nothing at all. Since its second building, New Hall, opened in May 2024 the museum holds more than seventy locomotives and carriages from Britain's national collection and bills itself as the largest undercover collection of historic rail vehicles in Europe. Almost everything here is the real thing rather than a model. The original Sans Pareil that competed at the 1829 Rainhill Trials, the experimental APT-E tilting train that looked in the 1970s as if it had landed from space, the vast blue prototype Deltic, a Battle of Britain class steam engine named Winston Churchill, and, in the Main Hall, Locomotion No. 1 itself, the engine that pulled that first train and gave the museum its name. One thing worth knowing before you set off: Stephenson's Rocket was based here from 2023 through the 2025 bicentenary and has since gone back to York, so do not make the journey for it. Loans between the group's museums shift in both directions, so if one engine is the reason for your trip, check the website first. The working 1975 replica of Locomotion No. 1, meanwhile, is the one that lives at Hopetown in Darlington. This is one of the county's most reliable family days out: level, step-free ground, tarmac paths between the buildings that suit pushchairs and wheelchairs, a cafe serving hot food, and indoor and outdoor picnic tables if you bring your own. The July-August school holidays bring a children's events programme, and some holiday activities and short rides are ticketed separately and need booking, though general admission never is. Allow ninety minutes to three hours, and know that seeing every building means up to a kilometre of outdoor walking, which is a nuisance in winter rain when the museum shuts at 16:00. From Durham it is an easy 35-minute drive; leave the A1(M) at junction 58 and follow the brown signs for the last quarter of an hour, with free and plentiful parking at the end of it. By train you change at Darlington for the Northern service to Shildon station, then walk 10 to 15 minutes; allow about an hour door to door. The town itself offers nothing else of note, so the museum is the whole outing. It earns the trip if someone in the family loves trains, and can be skipped without regret if nobody does.