briliantmap.com Last Updated: March 24, 2025
The map above shows the huge difference in the size of the UK vs Japan’s highspeed rail networks in 1963 compared to 2025.
The UK’s Stockton and Darlington Railway (25 miles; 40km long) opened in 1825 as the first passenger railway anywhere in the world.
And according to the Institution of Civil Engineers
“Allowing for stops, the first train to run on the S&DR averaged a speed of 8mph (13km/h) on its inaugural journey.”
It also cost £5.1m (in today’s money) and took only 3 years to complete.
Thus 2025, is the 200th anniversary of the existence of passenger rail.
At that time, the Tokugawa shogunate (Edo period) still ruled Japan, which remained more or less closed off to the rest of the world. And wouldn’t start opening up until it was forced to do so by the Americans from 1853.
Japan wouldn’t open it’s first railway line from Tokyo to Yokohama until 1872 almost 50 years after the UK.
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