All aboard for a trip back through rail's stylish age

What to wear when the new railway came to town? TONY HENDERSON tracks the changes in fashion as life speeded up

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A JOURNEY on the newly-arrived railway would have been a memorable occasion for passengers whose lives would be changed by the train.

On an individual basis, the railways impacted everything from fashion to the new leisure opportunity of the development of the seaside holiday.

This month’s 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway - the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives - is being marked by a new exhibition, titled Dressed for Departure: Fashion in the Age of Rail, at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle.

It assembles historic fashion, artworks and objects that reflect how the engineering advances reshaped lives and culture, especially in the North East, and how the beginning of the railway transformed not just transportation, but also personal style, artistic expression and social habits.

Darlington’s Edward Pease (1767-1858), often referred to as the Father of the Railway, played a pivotal role in founding the Stockton and Darlington Railway.