Alstom has announced the latest exhibit to be confirmed for its upcoming festival, The Greatest Gathering – Locomotion No. 1 – the world’s first steam locomotive to operate on a public railway.
The 200 year-old steam engine, which is being loaned by the National Railway Museum, will appear at the three-day festival in Derby alongside a number of other historically significant rail vehicles from the UK National Collection.
Held at Alstom’s Litchurch Lane Site in Derby from Friday 01 to Sunday 03 August 2025, The Greatest Gathering joins a number of festivities across the United Kingdom celebrating 200 years of the modern railway. It will mark the first time that the factory has opened to the general public in nearly 50 years and will feature over 50 exhibits from the railway’s past, future and present.
Locomotion No. 1 was built by the Newcastle-based Robert Stephenson and Company, the first company in the world created specifically to manufacture railway engines before going on to produce several of the first locomotives for other countries and being merged into Alstom itself in 1989.
The locomotive was designed to operate on the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) on September 27 1825, and now resides at the National Railway Museum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025.
Rob Whyte, Managing Director at Alstom UK and Ireland, said:We are very excited that Locomotion No. 1 will be joining an already unprecedented roster of historic and modern rolling stock at The Greatest Gathering. There is something poetic that one of Britain’s oldest steam locomotives will take pride of place within the factory where the UK’s newest trains are designed, engineered, manufactured and tested.
I want to thank the National Railway Museum – and indeed countless other partners across the UK rail industry – for supporting our mammoth event for Railway 200. We look forward to welcoming ticketholders to Britain’s biggest rail celebration later this year.
Other attractions from the National Collection joining Locomotion No. 1 at The Greatest Gathering include the Midland Railway 1000 Class No. 1000, a Derby-built steam locomotive known to be the first original engine designed by Samuel Waite Johnson in 1902 and Alstom’s own D6700, the first-built Class 37 diesel, which was built in 1959 and selected for preservation as part of the National Collection following the end of its service lifetime.
Craig Bentley, Director of the National Railway Museum, said:The Greatest Gathering promises to be a landmark event in this historic year for the railways. We are delighted to be able to showcase these historically significant vehicles from three distinct eras of locomotive design, from the early days of passenger travel to the golden age of steam, through to the switchover from steam to diesel.
The National Railway Museum forms part of the Science Museum Group and is basked in York, with a sister site – Locomotion – based in Shildon, County Durham. It houses roughly 280 rail vehicles as part of the National Collection, with around 100 on display to the public in York at any given time.
