A WRITER has just published a book setting the record straight about one of the world's great railway pioneers -almost 30 years after he visited her in a ghostly apparition.

Victoria Haworth was asleep in the master bedroom of her Newcastle home in September 1978 when the temperature suddenly dropped.

The architectural historian and researcher looked up to see the ghost.

She said: "There was this apparition in the room, shining white.

"It was a tall man with curly hair and a hooked nose, who was wearing a Masonic apron.

"A voice was saying that this was Robert Stephenson.

"I was scared stiff. I was in a state of shock. I never slept in that room again."

Mrs Haworth and her husband, Allan, decided to find out who had lived in the Georgian house, in Greenfield Place, Newcastle.

The pair discovered that the first occupant of the house, which was built in 1827, was Robert Stephenson.

He had taken his bride Frances Sanderson there and, two years earlier, had joined the Freemasons.

Mrs Haworth travelled to consult every archive relating to Stephenson, and came to the conclusion that, with a famous father in George Stephenson, he had not been given full recognition for his own achievements.

She said: "I put the record straight. When I did, everything going on in the house stopped.

"The years he spent in Greenfield Place were among the happiest of his life, and it has been a very happy house for us."

The book, The Making of a Prodigy, is available by sending a cheque for £10, made payable to the Robert Steph-enson Trust, to 20 South Street, Newcastle, NE1 3PE.