THE West Stanley Burns Pit Disaster exhibition by The Northern Echo is the first time the final resting places of all the 168 men and boys killed in the tragedy will be revealed.

Our reporter Chris Webber has spent more than a year tracking down the graves of 56 victims whose resting places had been lost in the passage of time.

Amateur historian Bob Drake, a former Stanley pitman, worked tirelessly behind the scenes and finally placed their unmarked mass burial trenches and graves.

Mr Drake devoted his spare time last year poring over council and church records, and scouring graveyards - even, in one instance, arranging for trees to be dug up so he could inspect gravestones.

He identified 54 of the victims in unmarked trenches in the former council cemetery at the back of St Andrew's Church, Stanley. The final two - Thomas Killingback and William Brophy - he found buried in Gateshead.

Money raised from the exhibition will be contributed to a Northern Echo campaign to erect a simple graveside tribute to those who died in the disaster but lie in the unmarked graves.

It follows on from the fantastic work of people in the town to have a memorial erec-ted to all of the fallen in 1995.

To make a donation post a cheque to The Northern Echo's Stanley Pit Disaster Memorial Appeal The Northern Echo, PO Box 14, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF.