Shildon Pacer

Shildon in County Durham is one of the places at the very start of steam powered railways with the first passenger train running there as early as 1825! Nowadays though Pacers run to the station there, thats nearly 200 years of progress!

York (3) : Darlington & Shildon stations

To get to NRM Shildon from York i had to change at Darlington but what an unexpected bonus this was as the station is very interesting with a great overall roof. Of course Darlington is one of the places at the very start of the railways, as the first railway to use steam locomotives instead of horses for passenger trains was from Stockton to Darlington. You can see my photos taken at Darlington station here as well as some taken at Shildon station.

Northern 142 084 at Darlington

Northern 142 015 at Shildon

Two Northern 142s at the Darlington bay platforms

A Virgin HST at Darlington

York (2) : NRM Shildon

Going to the National Railway Museum's other site at Shildon was in fact the main reason i came up to York for a couple of days. While York is doable from Birmingham for a day Shildon is just that much further that doing it in a day is a bit marginal. So i've had to put off coming to NRM Shildon until now.

It was well worth the wait, the collection at Shildon is amazing and includes the likes of the APT-E and the iconic Deltic prototype. My favourite locomotive on display however was the North Eastern electric shunter. One of the very first railway books i bought in the mid-1980s was on electric locomotives and the North Eastern loco was in it and i looked forward to a time i could see it for real. Maybe i didn't think it would take quite so long to finally achieve this dream! You can see my NRM Shildon photos here.

"Project Commuter" Class 414 to be restored

North Eastern electric shunter, seen at last!

APT-E

Deltic

Winston Churchill

APT-E logo