A BICENTENNIAL ON RAILS.

The first commercial steam railway commenced operation in September, 1825, transporting coal and passengers.  A tribute train ran into Darlington.

Locomotion №1 doesn’t sound like other engines. It doesn’t go “chuff”. An ancient animal: an iron dinosaur of the Georgian age. In the early hours of Sunday it hauled itself on the East Coast Main Line at Darlington and, sighing, gently clunked off into history & into the night. pic.twitter.com/1fZq5Ll9xD

— Tim Dunn (@MrTimDunn) September 29, 2025

The bell, I understand, was presented to the operators of the original Locomotion when it visited Chicago in 1883.

Darlington is on the East Coast Main Line, and one of the newest passenger trains was on hand when this commemorative train arrived.

No, the train does not call at Anaheim, Azuma, and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.  The train name comes from a Japanese word meaning "east," and I suppose you could use the A to Z to allude to the last word in transportation.  The formations are configured to run on diesels or using electric power.

In the Driftless Area of Illinois and Wisconsin, there is a Stockton in Illinois and a Darlington in Wisconsin, both with connections to mining, neither connected directly by rails, or on rails at all these days.

The absence of "chuffing," or as we have it in the States, "chugging?"  Learning by doing: subsequent generations of chief mechanical officers figured out that using the cylinder exhaust to create draft through the flues and boost performance was a good idea.  That might have been as early as George Stephenson's Rocket.