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The Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) was planned as a 26 mile railway to link inland coal mines to Stockton on Tees, where coal would be transferred for shipping. It was initially going to be a horse-drawn wagonway, but George Stephenson persuaded the builders to experiment with steam locomotives.
The line opened on September 27 1825, with Stephenson’s new locomotive ‘Locomotion No. 1’ pulling 36 wagons carrying a mix of coal and flour as well as guests and workmen.
Most of the passengers were carried in open wagons, but a purpose-built passenger coach, ‘Experiment’, carried 18 dignitaries, and became the first such vehicle to carry people on a railway.
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/history1.php
1825 - First steam engine to work a public railway (George Stephenson’s Locomotion, Stockton and Darlington Railway, Britain). “The car ‘Experiment’ passes into history as the first type of railway passenger coach. It belongs to a stage coach line, the managers of which have an agreement with the Stockton and Darlington Company to run it upon the road with the provision that the side track shall always be taken when a train of coal wagons comes into view. Passengers are carried at so much each, the same as on the stage line, and it is drawn by horses, as the locomotive service is exclusively for freight.”http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php/resources/more/railroad_history/
At this trial experiment, September 27, 1825, the first passenger-car, or wagon as it was called at that day, was put upon the road.
It had been ordered and made at Mr. Stephenson's works, and had only arrived the day before the trial.
It was the vehicle in which the directors and their friends rode upon the occasion.
Although built by Mr. Stephenson, it was a very modest and uncouth-looking affair, made more for strength than for beauty.
A row of seats ran along each side of the interior, and a long table was fixed in the center, the access being by a doorway behind, like an omnibus of the present day.
This vehicle was named the Experiment, and was the only carriage for passengers upon the road for some time. It was, however, the forerunner of a mighty traffic, and soon after new and more improved passenger-carriages were introduced upon the road, all at first drawn by horses.
The Experiment was first regularly put upon the road for passenger use on the 10th of October, 1861. It was drawn by one horse, and performed a journey each Bray daily between the two towns, twelve miles, in two hours.
http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/brown/chpt9.html
