The first railroad built in Great Britain to use steam locomotives was the Stockton and Darlington, opened in 1825. It used a steam locomotive built by George Stephenson and was practical only for hauling minerals. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830, was the first modern railroad.

The history of the "first train" in England is a progression of technology, but the most significant milestone is the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which opened on September 27, 1825. This was the world's first public railway to use steam-hauled locomotives for transporting both passengers and freight. The first train on this line was pulled by Locomotion No. 1, a steam engine designed by George Stephenson and his son Robert. It hauled 33 wagons, including one specially built passenger carriage called "Experiment," at a then-astonishing speed of 15 miles per hour. Before this, Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick had built the Pen-y-Darren locomotive in 1804 and the "Catch-Me-Who-Can" in 1808, which ran on a circular track in London as a curiosity. However, the Stockton and Darlington Railway marked the true birth of the "Railway Age." By 2026, the original Locomotion No. 1 is preserved and can be viewed at the "Locomotion" museum in Shildon, serving as a monument to the Industrial Revolution and the engineering genius that fundamentally transformed global transportation and commerce nearly 200 years ago.