A piece of old Cockerton that's being preserved in Beamish museum

It is a trolleybus shelter, which stood at the Travellers Rest stop for 30 years.

Passengers board a trolleybus in Cockerton Green, Darlington on the last day the vehicles ran in 1957

Trolleybuses began to replace trams in Darlington from January 17, 1926, and the shelter was installed in 1927 outside the Cockerton band club.

It became redundant on July 31, 1957, when the last of the trolleys ran from Neasham Road through Darlington town centre to Cockerton and Faverdale. The last passengers were photographed getting on the last trolley on that last day of operation from the shelter.

“There was no ceremony,” says Stephen Lockwood, in his 2004 book Darlington Trolleybuses. “The only public indication of their passing coming from valedictory articles in the local press. One day the trolleys were there and the next day they had gone – a disappointing end to Darlington’s electric street transport era.”

The cast iron shelter was taken down in the 1970s and was stored in pieces at Beamish until the 1950s project gave it new meaning. It was then sent to David Humphreys’ North Bay Railway Engineering in Barton Street for repair.

North Bay's computer-generated vision of how the Cockerton shelter looked 

“We got six pillars, a corner bracket and the central truss which was too rusted for us to use,” says David.

But there was enough for North Bay to work out what was missing and to make replacements in its Barton Street works, where the shelter has taken shape alongside steam engines that the works are building for railways in Southwold and the Forest of Dean plus a three-quarter size Foden steam wagon.

The Cockerton trolley shelter in the North Bay Railway Engineering works in Darlington this week

A second 1927 trolley shelter stood at the Barton Street stop on Haughton Road – ironically only a couple of hundred yards from the North Bay works. It was demolished in the 1980s. Does anyone have a picture of it?