John North: Where have all the flowers gone?

LEST readers suppose that it's getting like Rail News around here, it should at once be stressed that today's column also contains news of a multi-millionaire for whom a service bus remains the real transport of delight and of a former Royal Marine commando still on the crest of a wave.

Firstly back on the rails, however, and memories of an age when stations were greener - and probably much pleasanter, too.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Chronicling a couple of weeks ago the restoration of Kirkby Stephen East, on the former Stainmore Railway from Darlington to Tebay, we used a photograph of class J21 locomotive 65090, said to have been snapped in the station in the winter of 1953.

By that winter hangs a Brough reader's discontent. The date, suggests the clearly observant Mr A Booth, is almost certainly mistaken.

For one thing, he says, there's neither snow on the platform nor top coats on the passengers. For another, 65090 still carried the old "British Railways" legend and for a third (or possibly fourth) 65090 transferred from Darlington shed to Blaydon shed in December 1951.

It was certainly up north in August 1953, when heading a "Gardens Special" around Northumberland's many scenic stations. Mr Booth kindly sends details and pictures.

Passengers paid 8/3d, left Newcastle just after 2pm, wandered along the Tyne Valley to Hexham and then off up to Bellingham and Rothbury, across to Morpeth and back into the sunset city by 9.30pm.

Light refreshments were sold at "moderate charges" by an attendant passing through the five corridor coaches, the train stopping for ten minutes at stations like Humshaugh, Wark and Scotsgap so that passengers might take the air and smell the flowers.

Everything in the gardens seemed so lovely, in fact, that for several years BR were obliged to lay on a second train, Northumberland fire brigade so regularly called out to blazes started by the first that they simply waited trackside for the duplicate.

On one occasion, it's recorded, 65090 completed the last leg from Morpeth to Newcastle in 25 minutes - tender first, start to stop - when crack expresses were timetabled to cover the distance in 26 minutes.

The explanation, it was supposed, was the crew was anxious to book off and be in the pub before last orders.

Poor old 65090 finally returned to the Darlington-Barnard Castle line, shunted with other condemned engines onto the disused coal drops at Broomielaw, near Gainford, to await the cutters' torch at Darlington.

A single J21 survives, once at Beamish Museum but now being restored at a flour mill in the Forest of Dean. Many other North-East classes - A5 and A8, G5, J25, V1 and V3, L1, have disappeared completely. "Such a pity," says Mr Booth.

Mark Keefe of the Stainmore Railway Company accepts that the caption on the original photograph was probably wrong, now believes it to have been taken in 1949, and blames the photographer. It's something we've been doing for years.

ONCE Britain's platforms were floribundant. Porters pottered perennially, Best Kept Station awards further brightening the outlook line by line. Now there are just National Rail Awards, last year's winners Norwich, Waterloo, Totnes and Gobowen, a little place near Shrewsbury. "I don't suppose any of those is in your patch," says an NRA spokesman, helpfully.

Instead we took the 11.41 to Northallerton, once the Kew Gardens of the East Coast main line. Now there's not so much as a hanging basket.

The garden out the front's still OK but there's too much litter, too few flowers and plans for some of it to be concreted. "We know these things," said one of the taxi drivers. "If you spent as much time hanging around here as we do, you'd know, too."

Still, the Station Hotel proved entirely pleasant - a bed of roses morning after all.

STILL saying it with flowers, a bit of tin hat tenacity helped the folk of St Herbert's church in Darlington mark VE Day with a splendid festival last weekend.

Eight days before the official opening, the column once more assuming the role of poor man's Alan Titchmarsh, they'd arrived to find the church full of smoke, the boiler leaking all over the electrics and the meter ruined.

"The church stank, our hearts sank," said Pat Souter, one of the churchwardens, poetically.

St Herbert's is at yon end of Yarm Road, its foundation stones laid in March 1939 but the futuristic plans scuppered by the war. A dual purpose church and hall took its place.

Joan Gill, then an ATS girl and later mayoress of Darlington, attended 40s dances and had been recalling her wartime experiences to the children of nearby Heathfield primary school.

"Any questions?" said Joan.

"Did you get a full English breakfast?" asked one of the bairns.

"Not quite," said Joan.

It blossomed despite near disaster thanks to the Rev Christine Blakesley and her team, to the ladies of Darlington Flower Club - 200 members and a permanent waiting list - and to sweet perfumed providence.

"We need to thank God and the Electricity Board," said Pat. The combination is doubtless infallible.

IN the gardens of the Sir William Turner Almshouses at Kirkleatham, Redcar, they've found this clearly maritime badge - probably dating, says Peter Sotheran, from the days (1676-1942) when they had a free school for "ten poor boys and ten poor girls" . The girls were educated to work in domestic service; many of the boys joined the Merchant Navy.

They hope to put it on display with other historical finds over the years. Information welcomed at 1 Sir William Turner's Court or to SWTalmshouses@hotmail.co.uk

THE Royal Marine mentioned in the first paragraph is former Spennymoor lad Arnold Hadwin OBE, the editor who all those years ago gave me my first job - Bishop office of the Northern Despatch, £9 1s 6d - and who's probably had a sinking feeling ever since.

Long retired to Lincolnshire, Arnold is compiling a list of "succinct, flamboyant" phrases - "wise, stupid, abusive or containing unconscious humour" - which passed the lips of Royal Marine instructors.

He recalls, for example, an instructor who ordered silence - "When I want your opinion, I'll let you know what it is" - and another who supposed there were two ways of doing things. "The Royal Marines' way and the wrong way" .

Expletives should normally be deleted, adds Arnold, "unless absolutely necessary to convey the depth of feeling or full understanding" . He recalls, for example, an instructor's previously well disguised sensitivity before sending recruits on their first leave.

"And I don't want you saying to your dear old mother, pass the ******* salt."

Others much welcomed. The editor emeritus is at Millwood, Station Road, Langworth, Lincoln LN3 5BB; e-mail marine958@aol.com

RECKONED to be worth £55m in the Sunday Times Rich List, John Elliott is driven by all sorts of things - including the thought of getting behind the wheel of a bus.

"It would be absolutely fantastic," he enthuses. "All that fresh air, all those different people to meet."

For the moment, the engaging Mr Elliott has to make do with travelling by public transport - though the trip, he regrets, is less frequent than it used to be.

A few years ago, however, the 61-year-old founder chairman of the Ebac water cooler and dehumidifier company regularly caught the bus from his home in Bishop Auckland to the St Helen's Auckland factory or to Durham - "wonderful, every 15 minutes" - where he took a philosophy course.

"I sometimes think it's the only way to travel," he says. "You can watch the countryside, read, think how to build a better dehumidifier.

"People would pull up and offer me lifts, like I was doing something immoral standing by the roadside. They were amazed when I insisted I was OK.

"Sometimes I'd walk to work, too. It only took half an hour and gave me the opportunity to think things through. It wasn't wasting time; there were still another 47 half hours in the day."

Now he owns an MG and a BMW, has moved to the rather grand house near Crook formerly owned by ex-Sunderland footballer Kevin Phillips - "I spent my first 25 years with six of us in a two-up, two-down; now there's two of us in this great big place" - and though the Darlington to Tow Law bus route is near enough, admits that the No. 1 now comes second best.

"I once caught the X14 from Bishop Auckland to Middlesbrough and it was brilliant, there in not much over an hour, no changing and no hassle. The problem with bus travel is the changing, and having to pay twice."

Born in Bishop Auckland, raised at Morley, near Cockfield, he founded Ebac in 1972, led the successful "No" vote campaign in the North-East regional assembly referendum, became an omnivorous "Fred Elliott" for Red Nose Day - his wife Margaret a convincing Anne Robinson - and has no thoughts of retirement.

"I contemplated it seven or eight years ago, but only for about a week. Now I plan to work until I'm 80 and live until I'm 100."

The Rich List inclusion hangs like a stone of taties round his neck. "Someone once told me that the only way to deal with being a millionaire is to assume that you aren't, and it was very good advice. It seems to me that you should always work as if you need to pay the mortgage."

If the worst came to the worst, of course, he could always take the bus.