In the United Kingdom, the oldest station dreams of being restored for its 200th anniversary.

Letter from Hykington

The birthplace of the first industrial revolution, the United Kingdom has a fascinating industrial heritage, but one that has not always been highlighted by the lack of funding allocated to its rehabilitation. The example of the Stockton and Darlington Railway illustrates this phenomenon well. Bordering the industrial area of ​​Newton Aycliffe, a quaint town in County Durham (northeast England), is the oldest commercial railway line in the world.

26 miles (42 km) long, it opened in September 1825. The Society of Friends of the Stockton and Darlington Railway wants to use its bicentenary celebrations in 2025 to raise enough funds to restore the station. Works of art and places along its route.

At the exit of a roundabout, just after the entrance to the Japanese Hitachi factory, is Highington Station, a square building in a very sad state, although it is the oldest passenger station in the world. It opened in 1826, after the Stockton and Darlington line came into service. It has not been used since the 1960s, but trains still pass in front of its boarded windows, part of the original railroad that was consolidated in the late 19th century.^e Century, another, longer line, Tees Valley line.

Like stage coaches placed on rails

“The railway was born here because everything necessary for its origin was in the right place at the right time.” Archaeologist Caroline Hardy, a member of the Society of Friends of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, underlines. Durham's coal is one of the richest in the country: over the centuries, it has been mined in hundreds of mines scattered across the countryside. From the end of the 18th century^e Over the century, these mines were mechanized, using skilled engineers who experimented with steam engines to increase yields and replace horses. Prominent among these adventurous engineers was George Stephenson, from a village near Newcastle, north of Durham, who designed his first steam engine in 1814.

Finally, County Durham was home to the Quakers, pioneer-minded investors who represented a disaffected movement of the Anglican Church, rejecting its hierarchy and advocating peace and intervention in society. One of them, Edward Pease, a successful wool merchant from Darlington, surveyed a railway in 1818, making the bold gamble of creating the newly formed Stockton and Darlington Railway as a commercial freight and passenger transport. It was built in just three years. George Stephenson supervised the work and manufactured the engines at his company in Newcastle.

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