Could a crucial part of our railway history have made it to America?

“In 1940, Dr Jessie B Johnson of Youngstown, Ohio, walked into the offices of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway in Maryland, in 1940, and said she was there on behalf of her brother, VCS Johnson, of Hemet in California,” says Dr Michael Bailey, the world renowned expert on early steam locomotives who is conducting a six month inquiry into every aspect of the engine which steamed into history on the opening day of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825.

“Then she said: ‘These are the original nameplates from Locomotion No 1’, and walked off, leaving the nameplates behind. They are cast iron and badly corroded.”

The Baltimore & Ohio Railway (B&OR) is regarded as America’s first railway. A couple of its promoters visited Darlington and Shildon in January and April 1829 to see whether they should really invest in new-fangled steam locomotives for their project. They reported back from a snow-covered south Durham about the “astonishing” power and speed of the early locos and so when the B&OR it too was steam-hauled.

So could there be in Baltimore the original nameplates of the Darlington loco?

When Locomotion No 1 was built in 1825, it didn’t have a name or a number. It didn’t need a name or a number. It was the only engine on the line.

When other engines arrived, they were each referred to in the railway’s books by their driver’s name because his fee was worked out according to how many miles his engine travelled and how many tons it pulled. Out of his fee, he had to pay his costs for fuel and water and the wages of any helpers, like a fireman.

So when Locomotion No 1 exploded on July 1, 1828, at Aycliffe Lane and killed its driver, it was referred to as “John Cree’s engine” because that was the name of the unfortunate driver who was killed. The engine’s water pumper, Edward Turnbull, was injured in the explosion and spent the rest of his life looking like a dalmatian dog because his face had been splattered with boiling water.

The Shildon locomotive engineer Timothy Hackworth collected all the bits of John Cree’s engine from the fields around the level crossing and rebuilt “John Cree’s engine”.

The early drivers of the locomotives were especially responsible. They sped. They drove drunk. They carried illicit passengers – often female – on the footplates.

And they caused lineside fires – as the engines went along, hot ashes and sparks belched from their chimneys, setting fire to grass and trees. The faster the drivers forced their engines to go, the more hot cinders plumed out, even if bundles of netting were shoved in the chimneys in a bit to prevent the emissions.

In May 1831, Hackworth ordered all the engines should have numbers prominently displayed on their chimneys so that drivers could be traceable if there was a complaint against them. John Cree’s old engine was given the number “1” because it was the first.

At around the same time, a convention was developing that engines should be given a name. Hackworth’s Royal George, built in Shildon in 1827, was the first to be named. John Cree’s engine was probably just known as “Old No 1”, and perhaps by 1833 it was being referred to as “Locomotion No 1”.

In this drawing of Locomotion No 1 on its plinth at North Road station, it doesn't appear to have any nameboard whereas, below, it has acquired a nameboard

At the end of its working life, the Peases placed it on a plinth outside North Road station in 1857with a large “1” painted on its side. Then it acquired a brass nameboard saying “Locomotion” – initially just on one side – and by the time it became a global superstar when it was exhibited at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, it had huge nameplates saying: “1 Locomotion 1825”.

An Edwardian postcard of No 1 at Bank Top station with its great big nameboard on

These stayed with it until it was restored at Darlington’s North Road in 1960 when just the brass “Locomotion” plates were reapplied.

Locomotion No 1 in 1933 at Darlington's Bank Top station

So where do the Baltimore nameboards fit into the story of Locomotion No 1?

“In 1940, the railroad company failed to record any details about the provenance of the plates, but when it formed its large museum, they were duly passed on and remain in its collection today,” says Dr Bailey.

“The way they were presented strongly suggests that the plates had been passed down through the Johnson family through the previous 80-plus years, and I am hoping that someone in the North East will be able to identify the brother and sister, and may in turn suggest which member of the family might have taken them to America in the 19th Century.“We can but hope! It would be lovely to find out.”

READ MORE: SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH ABOUT LOCOMOTION No 1