PARISH council chairman Harry Irwin took a trip down memory lane yesterday to switch on the Christmas lights at Britain's newest heritage railway.

As he helped signal the start of a programme of Santa Specials on the Weardale line in County Durham over the next three weeks, he recalled how he first visited his local station in Stanhope as a paperboy.

"Two of us used to come down to the station around six in the morning and wait for the trains," he said.

"The papers were flung out in bundles onto the platform and we carried them off to the two paper shops in the village. We did that every day, except Sundays."

Stanhope councillor Irwin, now 72, returned to Stanhope station yesterday to unveil the first Christmas decorations to go up there since it closed to passenger traffic in 1953.

A five-mile stretch of the line between Stanhope and Wolsingham was reopened on July 17 this year by Weardale Railways Ltd and carried nearly 17,000 passengers before it closed for the season at the end of September.

More than 1,300 passengers have since booked to travel on six Santa Specials, which the railway company is operating in the run-up to Christmas, starting on Saturday.

Tim Hall, sales and marketing co-ordinator for the railway, said staff had been amazed.

Postmistress Maxine Raine, who runs a Santa's grotto around the year at her shop at St John's Chapel, has decorated the waiting room, ticket hall and other parts of Stanhope station.

A 20ft-high Christmas tree was transported there by the Forestry Commission from nearby Hamsterley Forest by assistant ranger Danny Bosanquet, helped by student Liam McGregor.

And the North-Eastern Cooperative Society, which has shops at Stanhope and Crook, weighed in with Christmas lights for the station.