DANBY is a single platform station on the line from Middlesbrough to Whitby with a rudimentary shelter, an old fashioned bench and a few flower tubs doing their best in the circumstances.

Everything seems in Sunday parlour order. Were it not so, were so much as a here nor there out of place, Mervyn Walker would be on the track.

We fell into conversation with Mervyn at a do the other night. Happily retired from North Yorkshire County Council, he has "adopted" Danby - his station in later life - under a scheme run by Arriva.

The job involves four visits a month, ticking a few boxes, making comments where necessary. The payment is an Arriva Northern free pass, unlimited travel from Lincoln to Liverpool and up almost to the Scottish border - Chathill, as they used to say, for Seahouses.

Arriva Northern has over 200 stations, each similarly "adopted" and - not entirely surprisingly - with a waiting list. A bit like putting the bairn's name down for Eton, we suggest to the young lady in the press office.

"I'm not quite sure it's quite like that but we were the first in the country to introduce the scheme, in addition to our own inspections, and we're very pro-active about it," she says.

Jobs for the old boys? "Anyone can do it. Often they live near the station, but it doesn't matter. It's another pair of eyes and ears for us."

Envious as eyeballs, we thought of asking to be added to the list but would probably have been allocated British Steel Redcar.

Minimum five days between each visit but otherwise to suit himself, Mervyn travels by train and clipboard from his home in Northallerton, 10.30am from Middlesbrough, a pleasant couple of hours in Danby before the train ambles back towards the Boro.

"It's an idyllic village, surrounded by sheep and daffodils," he reports. "There's a lovely little caf with great bread, then a pint and the paper in the Duke of Wellington and the 13.19 home again." Monday didn't quite go according to plan, however. It poured, electricity supply knocked out by the storm, no hot water at the cafe ("I missed me Earl Grey") and the Welly closed on Monday lunchtimes.

"Even the mobile phone wouldn't work," says Mervyn. "I thought the line might get blocked and they'd find me six months later, huddled up in that little shelter."

The column followed him next day, £9.30 day return from Darlington. The weather was little better, though power restored and pub open. Four fellow travellers occupied the 10.30, one underflowed the return.

Danby station was welcoming and informative, recently painted and not a paling out of place. Mervyn may care to note, however - he probably already has - that the sign advising that there is no public telephone nearby is two yards from a public telephone.

"They don't always seem to take notice," he says.

The village is as attractive as he supposes - castle where Catherine Parr once lived, Trumptonesque fire station, 350-year-old restored water mill which on a day like Tuesday seemed a little superfluous.

What's a little wet to a water mill?

The Stonehouse caf was superb - everything home-made, wonderful spicy tomato soup with croutons and olive bread, a run on Ruswarp pies - the Welly coal-fired and cosy.

They talked of the weather ("lot of watter down't beck"), of someone's pet dog ("barmy owld bugger") and of the state of the economy, though that wasn't so much a discussion as a monologue from the ex-ICI chap in the corner.

The 13.19 arrived perfectly to time. Transport of delight? Fine and Danby, anyway.

* Details of how to adopt a station from Arriva Northern on (01904) 522799.

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