Does the name and logo "Hopetown" put Darlington on the right track?

When it reopens as a visitor attraction next summer, it is to be called “Hopetown Darlington”. As Memories 652 explained, this was the name given in the early 1830s by the railway pioneers to the first terraces they built alongside the Stockton & Darlington Railway. They were hopeful that their enterprise would be a success and provide jobs for others and, more importantly, income for them.

Recently named Hopetown Darlington, the museum will be the focus of the town's railway history 

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READ MORE: THE HISTORY OF HOPETOWN

So it is a relevant, historical and positive name. It is better than the museum’s former name of Head of Steam, which meant nothing and caused confusion with a pub, and it is more enticing than its original boringly descriptive name, North Road Railway Museum.

It needs an explainer tagline, though. Just as there is “Beamish, the living museum of the north” and there was “Locomotion: the National Railway Museum at Shildon”, it should be something like “Hopetown Darlington: the birthplace of the railways”.

The logo has attracted even more comment than the name. It is made up of letters from typefaces that are inspired by late 19th Century American railroad posters.

The 1860s to 1890s were the great age of wood type printing, where letters were made in wood and put on a press to produce posters.

Two American designers, William H Page of Connecticut and JE Hamilton of Wisconsin, turned wood type into an artform, producing fancy, decorated and ultra-bold letters for eye-catching posters advertising railroads and also overland stagecoaches or river steamboats. Or for producing “Wanted: Dead or Alive” posters.

The H of Hopetown is taken from a typeface created from letters in the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Wisconsin, and the P is from a typeface called Overland Trail which, apparently, is the one most associated with the Old West of America.

The second O in Hopetown is from a typeface called Elephant that was designed for the Carlsberg brewery in 2004 but inspired, like all the other letters, by these American wood types.

Together they look very attractive – but do they scream Darlington? And do they instantly transport you back to 1825 and the birth of the railways in south Durham or do they fly you off to the American railroads stretching over the plains some 50 years later?

To tie the logo into Darlington, the Friends of the S&DR are suggesting that the Os of Hopetown should become the ornate “plugwheel” from Locomotion No 1 (above).

The early wheels of the locomotives were dreadfully prone to breaking but in 1827, for his engine Royal George, Timothy Hackworth came up with the plugwheel. Instead of one piece of cast iron, each wheel was made of two pieces which were held together by eight or ten wooden plugs and then had a wrought iron tyre shrunk around the edge.

These advancements reduced the number of breakages and made replacement much easier. They solved a major problem and, ingeniously, got the railway on track.

And they look fancy. They can be found cast into benches in Darlington and they were a safety feature on the 1990s £5 note which featured the Skerne Bridge.

Even though Hackworth is more often associated with Shildon, would the plugwheel work in Hopetown?

What do you think?

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