All aboard the Tanfield Railway

Hello. I’ve been to see some old trains. I thought you might like to hear about it. The Tanfield Railway likes to brand itself as “the world’s oldest railway”, operating since 1725. It’s the sort of boast that tends to come with asterisks attached, but it’s worded specifically enough that i think it might just be true. Is it the world’s first railway? Not by a long shot. The use of wheels in rails for transport goes back to the 1550s in Germany, and it was introduced to Britain soon thereafter. If you want to be really pernickety, you could even go back to ancient Greece, where a grooved Díolcos carried sea vessels over the inconvenient Isthmus of Corinth. Is it the world’s oldest passenger railway? Heavens, no — Wales’ Oystermouth Railway started carrying passengers over by horse in 1807, and the Stockton and Darlington let them aboard its steam trains from 1833, whereas the Tanfield wouldn’t begin its (short-lived) passenger operations until 1842. But… It is, as far as i can tell,…