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Fall Asleep with Frank — The Railway That Changed the World: A Gentle History of the Stockton and Darlington
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Frank tells the slow, quiet story of the Stockton and Darlington Railway — the world's first public steam railway — as a gentle bedtime sleep story. Settle in, breathe slowly, and let the grey skies of 1825 County Durham carry you off to sleep.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
There's a particular kind of morning that belongs to the north-east of England. Grey skies over low hills, the smell of damp earth, the sound of a river moving somewhere just out of sight.
Before there was a railway, there were packhorses. Coal from the inland mines of southern County Durham moved slowly across the land on the backs of animals.
By the time the line opened in eighteen twenty-five, steam locomotives were part of the plan. Coal wagons were hauled by steam from the beginning.
Coal was the railway's main business, and coal needed ships. The staiths at Stockton, where coal was loaded onto boats, had inadequate storage.
For a while in the late eighteen forties, the S&DR was in serious financial trouble. It nearly fell into the hands of another railway company.
Through the eighteen fifties and into the eighteen sixties, the S&DR kept expanding. Lines reached into Weardale, toward Barnard Castle, into the iron-rich hills around Guisborough.
The anniversary of the S&DR's opening was marked in eighteen seventy-five, fifty years on. It was marked again in nineteen twenty-five.
There's something restful about a story that ends not with a crash but with a quiet absorption into something larger. The line was built.
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