THE new railway museum in Shildon is expected to attract 60,000 visitors a year - but it does not just want to be about railways. It wants to include the people of Shildon. It wants to be about how they lived and played, as well as how they worked.

The £8m museum, which will open in September, has inherited a fine collection of photographs - but most of them are railways-related. Now it is enlisting the help of the people in Shildon and south-west Durham to fill in some of the gaps.

If you have any pictures of Shildon people going about their daily business, please get in touch with Locomotion: the National Railway Museum at Shildon.

Following an article in The Northern Echo a couple of months ago, the museum was inundated with kind offers of fur coats that were made in the town.

The story of Shildon's role in the fur trade will be in an exhibition, and now the museum hopes that it will get a similar response to its appeal for pictures, all of which will be copied and returned.

If you have any pictures of old Shildon, please get in touch with Locomotion: the National Railway Museum at Shildon, Soho Cottages, Shildon, County Durham, DL4 1PQ, or telephone (01388) 777999.

Alternatively, contact Echo Memories at The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, County Durham, DL1 1NF, telephone (01325) 505062, or e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk and we can forward to the museum.

To get you going, here are some fascinating pictures from the museum's archive, and we would be delighted to hear from you, if you can provide further information about them.

Published: 26/07/2004

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.