There's a great double-page spread in tomorrow's Northern Echo on an historic day which is coming up for lovers of steam locomotives.

On June 23, Tornado - Britain's first mainline steam locomotive to be built in half a century - will pull the world-famous Mallard en route from York to Shildon.

Mallard has been housed at the National Railway Museum at York since 1975 but is moving for an unknown amount of time to the Locomotion museum at Shildon.

Here at The Northern Echo, we are in no doubt that steam locomotives generate great interest.

Whenever Tornado is featured in the paper, we sell a lot more copies, and when the loco is on the website, there is a sharp spike in the number of hits. The evidence is clear.

We are guaranteed another good sales day in June when Tornado and Mallard travel together up the East Coast Main Line.

And the fact that Shildon will be at the centre of worldwide attention underlines again what Darlington has missed by failing to see the potential of becoming the home of Locomotion - the sister site of the National Railway Museum.