The narrow silver fimbriations on either side of the basilisk were intended to represent the rails of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first passenger railway, that lay partly in the borough.
This was tested for a range of industrial uses, particularly for colliery traffic on the Stockton to Darlington line.
The railway carried steam locomotives 9 years before the Stockton and Darlington Railway and is believed to be the first passenger steam railway in the world.
On the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the safety valve tended to go off when the engine hit a bump in the track.
The yard lay on the original Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) extension to Port Darlington, developed from 1828 under the instructions of influential Quaker banker, coal mine owner and S&DR shareholder Joseph Pease, who had sailed up the River Tees to find a suitable new site down river of Stockton on which to place new coal staithes.
After attending Bishop Auckland private school until the age of thirteen, he found employment as a clerk in the Shildon office of the mineral department of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
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This differed from the Stockton and Darlington, as sections of this line employed cable haulage, and only the coal trains were hauled by locomotives.
From here, initially the coal was carried by horse, but this was later replaced by the Stockton and Darlington Railway, who ran the coal to Newport on the River Tees.
Thomas Richardson (Middlesbrough) (1771–1853), investor and director of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and founder of Middlesbrough.