Head of Steam Darlington Railway Museum

Darlington was one of the termini of the celebrated Stockton & Darlington Railway, opened in 1825, and the location from 1863 until 1966 of the principal engineering works of the North Eastern Railway. The Head of Steam Museum comprises North Road Station, opened in 1842 once part of the Stockton & Darlington, the adjacent goods shed and the nearby Hopetown Carriage Works. The museum opened as the Darlington Railway Museum in 1975. Exhibits include George Stephenson’s Locomotion No 1, which pulled the train on the opening day of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, and Derwent, built in Darlington in 1845 for the S&DR. Both were displayed until 1975 on plinths at Darlington’s Bank Top station on the East Coast Main Line, Locomotion from 1892 and Derwent from 1898, and both belong to the national collection. The museum includes two other locomotives both from the North Eastern Railway, a 2-4-0 of 1885 and an 0-8-0 of 1919, and a large model of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The station’s entrance hall and ticket office have been restored in period style, and there are examples of rails and sleepers of the early nineteenth century. A study centre in the museum is named after Ken Hoole (1916-88), the distinguished historian of the North Eastern Railway.