IT was time for bed. "Pack away your toys," said the giant's mother. The giant could not be bothered. As he flicked off the light in the playroom and pulled the door closed behind him, he just kicked at the top of his tall brick tower.

The tower wobbled and then toppled, falling on to the fellside, its columns breaking like Lego as it hit the contours.

And there it lies to this day, overgrown and forgotten, like a giant's plaything at the end of the day.

The ruins of the Lands Viaduct are the most spectacular of all the remains that lie on Cockfield Fell - the largest ancient monument in the North.

But at least those remains, which once carried the railway line from Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle over the fell, had a long and useful life.

The viaduct, designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, stood for more than 100 years - unlike the far more famous bridge designed by Sir Thomas, which collapsed in what is still regarded as the worst engineering failure ever seen in the British Isles.

Sir Thomas came from Cumbria. He served his apprenticeship on the Edinburgh and Northern Railway and the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway, before becoming resident engineer of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR).

The S&DR was expanding rapidly, and Bouch was put to work building extraordinary constructions, including the Belah Viaduct on the Barnard Castle to Tebay line across the Pennines.

When that line opened, on July 4, 1861, Sir Thomas was already on with his next project, linking Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle.

It involved a viaduct spanning the River Gaunless and the Haggerleases branch line at a place on the edge of Cockfield Fell called Lands.

The viaduct was 640ft long and was 93ft above the Gaunless. It cost £15,422 to build (a little less than £700,000 today) and opened, with the rest of the line, which included another Bouch-built bridge at Langleydale, on August 1, 1863.

Then Bouch was off to Scotland to build more bridges, where his reputation for completing projects cheaply and on time increased. For years, he advocated spanning the huge River Tay, near Dundee, and in 1873 the Tay Bridge Company, under his direction, started work on what would become the longest bridge in the world.

The workmen immediately ran into difficulty sinking the piers, which caused the price of the bridge to rise from £217,000 to £320,000. Nevertheless, it successfully opened on June 1, 1878, with its 85 spans 88ft above high water and running for nearly two miles.

Queen Victoria crossed the bridge the following summer on her way to Balmoral and was so impressed with Bouch's work that on June 27, 1879, she knighted him.

By then, Sir Thomas was at work on an even more adventurous project: the Forth Bridge.

But the Tay was already showing signs of wear. It swayed when trains steamed over it and bolts were working loose.

Then came a severe winter. In the cold some of the iron started to crack and some of the lugs began to sheer off. But the speed limit on the bridge - which safety inspectors had set at 25mph - was increased to 40mph.

On December 28, 1879, a storm, force ten, buffeted the bridge. Winds gusted up to 70mph. The storm was at its height at 7.14pm, when the evening train - 225ft long, weighing 114 tons, with six carriages and carrying 75 passengers and crew - approached.

The centre of the bridge collapsed, and the train poured off the rails into the icy water. There were no survivors (except the engine, which was pulled from the riverbed, restored, put back into service and nicknamed The Diver).

Sir Thomas' reputation collapsed. He was pulled off the Forth Bridge project and as the inquiry unfolded he bore the blame.

His design had not included enough cross bracing or lengthways support to withstand a gale.

Interestingly, he had designed the Tay Bridge to withstand wind pressure of ten pounds per square foot, but for the Forth Bridge was working on a pressure of 30 pounds per square foot.

The Tay Bridge, said the inquiry, was "badly designed, badly constructed and badly maintained". As Sir Thomas was in charge of design, construction and maintenance, it was difficult to pass the buck - although the Middlesbrough firm Hopkins, Gilkes and Company, which had supplied most of the iron and had engaged in some very dubious practices, was also blamed and went bankrupt.

But the inquiry concluded: "There is no one who is more deserving of pity than the civil engineer who designed and constructed the Tay Bridge and who, as the law now stands, is held responsible for its defects."

It was a huge blow to the confidence and self-esteem of Victorian England, which regarded itself as the best in the world.

Sir Thomas fell ill and died on October 30, 1880, physically and mentally a ruined man. His fall had been as dramatic as his bridge's: 12 months and 26 days after the bridge had opened, he had been knighted; six months and one day later the bridge collapsed; ten months and two days later, he lay dead.

BACK on Cockfield Fell, Sir Thomas Bouch's work was holding up much better - but not perfectly.

Sir Thomas had designed Lands Viaduct wide enough to take a double track, even though he had installed a single one.

In 1899, engineers thought it would be simple to add another track. But when they got up there, they discovered the steelwork had decayed so badly that it all had to be replaced. The operation took six years and cost £9,858.

Bouch's line left Bishop Auckland on a new stretch of track that ran to Fylands Bridge, where it joined the Shildon Tunnel branchline and then ran on to the Haggerleases line. It left the Haggerleases at Spring Gardens Junction, and then wiggled its way across the fell avoiding the parks of Raby and Streatlam castles before arriving in Barnard Castle.

Its highest point was at Gibsneese, and it had two stations - Cockfield and Evenwood. Cockfield station was a long walk from Cockfield, and was renamed Cockfield Fell on July 1, 1923, to prevent confusion with Cockfield in Suffolk. Evenwood station was really in Ramshaw.

Because of the gradients on the line, it took 24 minutes to travel the seven and three-quarter miles from Bishop Auckland to Cockfield, but only 20 minutes on the way back.

Similarly, the journey from Cockfield to Barnard Castle took 15 minutes, but coming home took 17 minutes. Average speed was 27mph.

In its heyday, there were six passenger trains a day in both directions. The first one called at Cockfield at 7.17am; the last one at 8.56pm.

But far more important than passengers was the freight that the line carried. Freight trains had two engines at the front and one at the back; in between were 36 20-ton wagons carrying County Durham coke westwards to the industries of Cumbria; iron ore for the steelworks of Spennymoor and Teesside came eastwards. Between 1900 and 1918, half-a-million tons of minerals were transported on the line.

Like the Haggerleases beneath it, there were private colliery lines connecting on to it. The longest went from the east end of Lands Viaduct and followed the contours of the land for five miles as it climbed to Woodland Colliery. The line's terminus was only three miles away from the end of the Haggerleases branchline - but it was 550ft higher.

Woodland Colliery once produced enough coal to fire 196 coke ovens locally, but its private line closed in 1921 and was dismantled in 1923 - although you can still follow its scar across the fell.

This was the beginning of the end of the line from Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle. In the winter of 1955, the six passenger trains were cut to two. A train left Middleton-in-Teesdale at 7.40am, reached Cockfield at 8.31am before going on to Bishop Auckland, Durham and Sunderland. The return journey cal led at Cockfield at 4.30pm.

On October 14, 1957, Evenwood station was closed. On September 15, 1958, Cockfield Fell station was closed. Non-stopping passenger trains continued to traverse the fell until June 12, 1962, when the Bishop Auckland to Barnard Castle service was withdrawn.

The girders and platform of Lands Viaduct were removed in 1964 and a couple of years later, dynamite was applied to its central column, which collapsed dramatically across the fell as if it were no more than a giant's tower of play bricks.

THE death of the "High Line" just left the "Low Line", dear old Haggerleases. But only for a matter of months. All its passenger trains had been withdrawn in 1872, and its freight trains continued to rumble until September 30, 1963. The Shildon Tunnel branch closed on August 31, 1968, when Randolph Colliery at Evenwood closed.

* ENTRANCED by Cockfield Fell? There's no better time to visit the fell than this weekend.

A guided walk over the fell leaves the Gaunless Valley Visitor Centre in The Slack at the foot of Butterknowle at 11am on Saturday.

An exhibition complete with a working model railway is in Butterknowle Village Hall on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 11am to 3pm.

On Monday, Echo Memories will be giving a talk about the fell's history. The fell's history starts about 10,000BC; Echo Memories' talk starts at about 2pm.

* A COUPLE of corrections from last week: the Shildon Tunnel opened in 1842 and in 1856 the Shildon Tunnel branch line connected the tunnel with the Haggerleases branch line. This meant that Brusselton Incline, with its stationary engine and rope system, was circumnavigated.

Published: 21/08/2002

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