Michael Palin backs Darlington Locomotion No 1 campaign

Monty Python star and travel presenter Michael Palin is supporting a campaign to stop the relocation of the famous Locomotion No 1 steam engine.

The National Railway Museum (NRM) wants to move the engine from Darlington, where it has been for 160 years, to its Locomotion museum in Shildon.

Mr Palin said Darlington and the steam engine "should remain united".

The museum said the locomotive also had a history in Shildon and had embarked on its inaugural journey from the town.

Built by railway engineers George and Robert Stephenson, it became the first to pull a passenger train on a public railway in 1825.

It has been housed at Darlington's Head of Steam Museum since 1975, but the NRM wants to move it ahead of the Stockton & Darlington Railway's 200th anniversary in 2025.

Mr Palin said his "gut-feeling is that we should wherever possible remember and celebrate the key sites of our industrial heritage", although he did not know the full background to the location row.

"Darlington and the birth of steam railways go hand in hand - Locomotion No 1 confirms that," he added.

As a designated national asset Locomotion No 1 is under the NRM's control but Darlington Borough Council is campaigning to keep it.

Council leader Heather Scott said it was "unthinkable to imagine it anywhere else but Darlington for the 200th anniversary of the world's first passenger railway".

"It is heart-warming to know our campaign has struck a chord with Michael Palin who is famous for travelling the world many times over using the railway," she said.

The Locomotion museum's head Sarah Price said: "The engine continued to call Shildon home throughout its working life and was even rebuilt here."

The museum was "just nine miles north of Darlington" and there was the possibility of returning the engine to Darlington on short-term loans, she said.

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