SOME interesting follow-ups to Wednesday's article are emerging, and I'll get them up here as time permits.

Malcolm Ellison of the North Eastern Railway Association wonders whether the carved face on the Lune road bridge in deepest Teesdale may be a variation of the "laughing-greetin'" faces that grace canal bridges in Scotland.

He points me to a website for the Union Canal which runs from Edinburgh to Falkirk. It was dug between 1818 and 1822, largely to carry coal. Of course, at the same time, County Durham's technologically advanced boys were rejecting the foolish idea of canals and moving into railways.

Anyway, on the Seagull Trust Cruises' website it explains: "Once out of the tunnel we pass under two bridges, the first being known as the “Laughin’ Greetin’ Bridge” probably the most notable bridge on the Canal. The keystones on this bridge are engraved with faces - the one facing west being that of a crying (or greetin’) man and the one facing east being that of a laughing man. The reason for the engravings are lost in the mists of time but it is thought that the east looking, Laughing face looked over the contractor who had the easy, and profitable, job of digging the level open canal to Edinburgh, whilst the Greetin’ west face looked over the contractor who had the hard and dangerous job of digging the tunnel and then the eleven locks down to the Forth & Clyde Canal, and who went bankrupt as a result."

The Lune road bridge, from which our face looks upstream, was built in the early 18th Century, but the upstream side was widened when the Lunedale railway viaduct was built over the top of it in 1868.