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In a region whose physical face was blighted first by industrial success and then by urban neglect, the towns along the Tees Valley take some beating. Whether approaching from Yorkshire to the south or Durham to the north, it seems that a view isn't considered a view hereabouts unless it's blocked by towers and pipes, clouded by smoking chimneys and framed by rusting machinery. This, of course, is a harsh judgement and only half the story - the River Tees , along with the Tyne farther north, was one of the great engines of British economic power in the late nineteenth century. Few tourists stop now, but there were once rich pickings here, in places like Darlington , twenty miles south of Durham city, where the first public passenger-carrying steam train, George Stephenson's Locomotion , made its inaugural run. The line ran first to Stockton-on-Tees and was then extended to ports at Middlesbrough and Hartlepool , to enable ever-increasing amounts of Durham coal to be unloaded and exported. Later in the nineteenth century a branch line was built to the coastal resort of Saltburn , which has managed to retain much of its Victorian grandeur.
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