Etherley Incline, Northern Terminus of the Stockton-Darlington Railway

About

Track the course of one of the first passenger railways on the planet.

Near West Auckland The Way of Life joins one of locomotive history’s most significant landmarks, one of the northern stations of the world’s very first passenger carrying, steam operated, public railway. Your walk from the hamlet of Greenfields through to Etherley heads along Etherley Incline, constructed as part of the Stockton and Darlington rail network that would carry coal away from the area’s main colliery at Witton Park. George Stephenson was engaged for the project and completed the railway in 1825. It operated by a beam engine first taking the wagons up and over the hill your path follows down to cross the River Gaunless at St Helen Auckland.

Wagons were then pulled by horses to Brusselton Incline, which went over to Shildon and from there on the Stockton & Darlington Railway to the mouth of the Tees. On that first life-changing day the railway opened, 27th September 1825, action began when 12 wagons were drawn up Etherley North Bank. Some wagons were carrying passengers: hence the boast that Etherley Incline is “The world’s first passenger railway.”

Soon after this, The Way of Life passes Witton Park. The village’s most famous sons are the heroic Bradford Brothers, four siblings who fought in World War I and were all decorated for their courage, with two receiving the Victoria Cross. However only one, Thomas, returned home. The monument to the four, as emotive a testament to the Great War and how it affected communities back home as any, is near the village green.