An electrifying experience

No offence to Shields, of course - canny Shields in the days when it had nowt - but you couldn't exactly call it mysterious.

Whitley Bay and Tynemouth were different, places for high days if not for holidays. Whitley Bay and Tynemouth were, literally, electric.

Trains from Newcastle would overflow with anticipation and with egg and tomato sandwiches, with buckets in spades and with visions of French leave and Spanish City.

Driven by power from a third rail, the first electric services on what became known as the North Tyne Loop, linking city and coast, began 100 years ago this summer. Almost immediately, the resorts were revived. Train travel increased by a quarter in the first six months, business boomed. Tyneside was commuting, in a sentence.

Steam trains had been considered dirty, unreliable and expensive; more salubrious municipal trams were buzzing off with the customers. The North Eastern Railway decided to recharge the batteries, and almost within two years of the electrification proposal had finished the £300,000 project, including 58 power cars.

Though the coastal watering holes had initially opposed any railway service - Tynemouth lodging house keepers claimed that "a businessman would never think of taking rooms when he could go down by train, bathe and be home again for breakfast" - the effects of electrification were immediately obvious.

The population of Whitley Bay and Monkseaton doubled from 7,000 in 1900 to 14,000 in 1910, and had reached 22,000 by 1920. In 1911, Whitley Bay station issued just over half a million tickets to a population of under 12,000, North Shields issued twice as many and Tynemouth - precious jewel among the North Tyneside stations - 356,302.

It was at Tynemouth station, variously described as "a masterpiece of the high Victorian period", a "showpiece of elegance" and a "magnificent dowager", that on Bank Holiday Monday centenary celebrations continued along electric avenue.

In the days of fresh air, fun and Glasgow Fair Fortnight, the station had three through platforms and six bays, five porters to a shift, a ladies' room that might have served as a lordly advertisement for Mansion Polish and a rockery beneath the bridge in which a stone bore the inscription:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the bird for mirth

You are nearer to God in the garden

Than anywhere else on earth.

Now only the Tyne and Wear Metro slides through on either side, and it was the Metro plan to demolish Tynemouth station - all intricate wrought iron and fabled floribundance - which led to a successful fight for its retention and restoration.

A 1985 Passenger Transport Executive study, expensively commissioned and easily ignored, had even recommended knocking the station down, storing it bit by bit and rebuilding at some future date. For some reason the idea fell through before the station roof did.

Now it is a Grade II listed building, once more bedecked and bustling, not least thanks to the Friends of Tynemouth Station - friends, indeed - and to the flea markets held each weekend for 20 years. Among much else on the concourse there's an Italian restaurant, a Swiss physio and something called the Brilliant Hair Company.

On Monday, a special train brought the Lord Mayor of Newcastle to ElecFest 2004, though his chauffeur drove him back again. Music was provided by Paul and the Groove Diggers playing Chatanooga Choo-choo (calling at all stations), by Poi People ("Maori dance with balls") and by Northumbrian clog dancers waltzing to the tune of Glory, Glory Hallelujah.

There was even a stall selling boomerangs, but presumably only to those with return tickets.

The original electrics, once all straight sides and red and cream livery, are no longer current, of course. The Metro, dependable but dishwater dull, began looping the North Tyneside loop in 1983.

The plug had first been pulled in March 1967, however, replaced by what Thomas the Tank Engine contemptuously and correctly called the Diseasels.

EAST Ham born Russell Lord, Richmond's present mayor, loves the town so much that when working for the railways at Paddington he commuted every day for two years.

The daily round involved a drive into Darlington, 6am train to London, Underground to Baker Street and walk to Paddington. Usually he caught the 4.30pm train homeward from Kings Cross and was in his armchair three hours later. The journey, he insists, was well worth it.

"We've only been in Richmond 11 years but I'm reluctant to leave it, even for a night. People envied me because I was coming back up north every night."

These days he works rather closer to home. The mayor only has to travel to Glasgow.

THE piece a month ago on the "other" Shildon - now just three tranquil houses but once a bustling lead mining village near Blanchland - has greatly boosted its tourism potential.

Permission has also been sought to include extracts in the Hunstanworth Village Hall Association Parish Post, with a 350 circulation throughout Hunstanworth, Muggleswick, Edmundbyers, Blanchland and Ramshaw.

Local lad makes good.

THE column a couple of weeks back was asked if there might be a fourth Co Durham village beginning with the letter "Q" - Quebec, Quarrington Hill and Quaking Houses the three more obvious - and wondered about Quarry Burn, near Hunwick.

Hunwick's between Bishop Auckland and Willington. "Quarry Burn? It used to be two houses and a brewery," someone said in the Joiners Arms - lovely hot pork sandwiches - the following evening.

It is by one of life's thirsty coincidences, therefore, that Brian Bennison in Corbridge has sent a copy of his meticulously researched The Brewers and Breweries of North-Eastern England, in which the Quarry Burn Brewery sits happily on Page 90.

Advertised in 1818 as "most desirable and complete" and "the only brewery between the market towns of Bishop Auckland, Durham and Wolsingham", it was again for sale in 1894 - malthouse, two cottages, stables, inn and 25 acres.

Dr Bennison's masterwork - "the appeal may be in its stimulation of nostalgia and beery sentiment" - suggests that while Quarry Burn may have been the only brewery in those parts, most towns and villages were unlikely ever to run dry. Bishop Middleham and South Church have each had four breweries, Houghton-le-Spring 14, Darlington - the Quaker town - a brewery on every corner.

Cockfield's Victorian brewery was run by Jeremiah Dixon, presumably a descendant of the village adventurer and surveyor whose name lives on in the Mason Dixon Line.

Many other gems remain as lights beneath Dr Bennison's bibulous bushel. The book's £10.95 (including p and p) from Beer Inn Print, Long High Top, Heptonstall, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire HX7 7PF.

... and finally, in a piece which questioned a possibly misplaced apostrophe, the column two weeks also referred to "Woolworth's".

The company calls itself "Woolworths", however, as Bill Thorpe was anxious to point out and as we originally wrote.

Since others had inserted the apostrophe, we expressed an opinion of them. "I agree," said Bill, "but is that pillocks with or without an apostrophe?"

The Mayor takes a ducking

OUT of its depth as usual, last week's column on Richmond's seven-yearly boundary beating referred to the "legend" that in 1962 the municipal Water Wader was persuaded by television crews deliberately to dunk the Mayor in the middle of the Swale.

Camerman Mike Porter insists it's no legend, however. Not only was he there, not only was he party to the persuasion (shall we say) but he still has the black and white film to help prove it.

The mayor was Alderman Fred Woodall, known for some reason as Chirby; the Water Wader was the trilby hatted Eddie Kinchin. "Those of us who were filming the event made sure that we were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time," says Mike.

In those days, the Water Wader, Town Crier and Sergeant at Arms were three different people - "multi-tasking is a recent phenomenon".

Mike's immersed himself in every subsequent boundary walk but never since supposed that where there's a will there's a wader. "I do have pictures of Roy Cross, the Mayor in 1990, falling full length into the thorn bushes at the edge of the golf course - but that was a genuine accident."