Known as the "Father of the Railways", George Stephenson once said: "The locomotive has not been the invention of any one man, but of a race of mechanical engineers."

However, this is to downplay his reputation and legacy as an inventor of locomotives and a railroad pioneer.

Born in 1781 in Wylam, near Newcastle, he became fascinated with machines at an early age. As an engineman at Killingworth Colliery, he took apart the colliery engines to see how they worked.

He built a number of engines at Killingworth and its owners set him to building an eight-mile railway from Hetton to the River Wear at Sunderland, the first to be independent of horse power.

In 1821, an Act of Parliament was passed allowing a company owned by Darlington's Edward Pease to build a horse-powered railway linking collieries in south-west Durham, Darlington and the River Tees at Stockton.

Stephenson met Pease and suggested it should be a locomotive railway. He was hired as chief engineer of the Stockton & Darlington company to help build the line.

With his son, Robert, he formed the world's first locomotive engine company, in Newcastle.

Its first engine, Locomotion No 1, was guided by Stephenson, with passengers, on a nine-mile section of the Stockton & Darlington Railway on its opening day on September 27, 1825.

His biggest success came when the proposed Liverpool & Manchester railway directors held a trial to decide which locomotive to use.

The winner of the then huge prize of £500 was the Rocket, produced by Stephenson, and his son, Robert.