COINCIDENCE has carried us four times in the past week to Durham, and there'll be a fifth on Friday when the Choral Society sings The Messiah in the Cathedral.

There is no great hardship in any of that, of course. Even the Christmas lights are brighter in Durham - a jolly sight more festive, say, than are Darlington's. It's the trains which are the trouble.

The 1.12pm to Glasgow left Darlington 40 minutes behind schedule on Sunday. "Engineering work at Hitchin, signalling problems at Newark and being delayed outside Darlington due to setting off the hot axle box detectors," explained the conductor, in a tone which suggested that the entire journey between Motherwell and Glasgow might be consumed by a litany of late running.

In their worst nightmares, however, no one could have foreseen what was to happen next.

Shortly before that ever breath-taking viaduct, the conductor announced that we would shortly be arriving in Durham. In a way it was true, though it wasn't at the platform.

Three lines run through Durham railway station: north-bound platform, south-bound platform and the two-way track in the middle used by non-stop and freight services.

Our train stopped in the middle, marooned amid Britain's ever-escalating rail chaos. The signal-man, said the conductor, had made a "slight mistake" and was being spoken to by the driver.

What the driver said may be imagined, but could certainly not be printed.

After much further delay, the train finally ran back across the viaduct, switched track and entered the platform. The conductor remained speechless, which is probably to say lost for words.

Passengers alighted with long practised smiles of English resignation; porters examined their Sunday best boots. Perhaps the common thought needed no greater articulation: thanks to the signal-man's "slight mistake," what if another middle of the road train had been proceeding at 125mph in the opposite direction?

FOR all manner of reasons, including trains apparently disappearing up their own vestibules, nothing last Wednesday evening ran southwards between Durham and Darlington for almost two and a half hours.

As usual, we helped pass the time by reading the statutory notices of performance, operating company by operating company, for the previous month.

Northern Spirit, on shorter routes and amended timetables, had performed reasonably well; GNER on the main line had "almost 80 per cent" of trains arriving within ten minutes of schedule - which means that more than 20 per cent didn't - while Virgin Cross Country could claim just 58 per cent within ten minutes.

Perhaps the mounting frustration had got to the poor Durham porter, too. "Passengers for Darlington," he finally announced, "should change at York".

SATURDAY evening, Durham city centre. Though it is late November, the young men are under-dressed and the young ladies half-naked.

They are boisterous, occasionally belligerent and because they can't all climb on the statuesque horse in the Market Place, an alarming number seem to be mounting one another instead. It is still just 7.30pm.

Feeling venerable if not vulnerable, we head west to concert night at Esh Winning Football Club where Les Teasdale is singing Roy Orbison.

After the youthful indulgence of the down-town Durham, verily it is music to the ears.

SUNDAY'S Durham visit was to bid a slightly premature farewell to the Rt Rev Alan Smithson, the Bishop of Jarrow, who retires before Christmas.

Much more of that in Saturday's At Your Service column: suffice that Bishop Alan not only disclosed that "episcopal" is an anagram of Pepsi-Cola - with characteristic humility, he credited the discovery to the Bishop of Lincoln - but also that clergy seeking appointments within the Church of England are invited to nominate their preferred areas on a scale of one to 15.

London's number one, the Home Counties, two, Devon and Cornwall three and so on. The Diocese of Newcastle is 13, the Diocese of Durham - which perennially struggles to attract clergy - is 14.

So what can instil yet greater mortal terror into the God fearing than being on their knees in Durham? In fifteenth place....Gibraltar.

The last train left Durham almost on time on Monday evening, and was just a quarter of a mile from Darlington station when it was halted. There wasn't a platform free - at 11.15pm, in 2001.

After ten minutes the conductor announced that, whilst there was now a free platform, we still couldn't proceed because a lorry had collided with the bridge in front. The wagon came off worse than the bridge. Home, yet again, turned midnight.

OTHER matters, and Mr Ronald Hails, a dog-walking Hartlepudlian familiar to readers of the Backtrack column, sends a fax addressed to "The Gadfly chappie."

Enclosed, or attached, or whatever it is you do with faxes, is a long and rather splendid poem by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about his only first-class cricket victim, and the most famous scalp of all.

Conan Doyle, of course, is best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Assiduous further research reveals that he also spent hundreds of thousands of pounds promoting his belief in fairies, that his mother had both a boarding house and an affair with the lodger, that he was a medical doctor and an eye specialist, that Holmes so annoyed him he killed him off in 1893 - the poor chap had to be resurrected - that he was a spiritualist and that he twice stood unsuccessfully for Parliament.

Nothing, however, suggested that he had so much turned his arm over, much less claimed the greatest scalp of all. The mystery deepened, as The Great Detective might have said, but here's the start of the insistent epic:

Once in my heyday of cricket

Oh day I shall ever recall

I captured that glorious wicket,

The greatest, the grandest of all.

Before me he stands like a vision,

Bearded and burly and brown,

A smile of good-natured derision

As he waits for the first to come down.

And later...

The capture of such may elate one,

But it seemed like some horrible jest,

That I should serve tosh to the great one

Who had broken the hearts of the best.

In desperation, we turned to that other great stalwart of the Backtrack column, Durham County Cricket Club scorer Mr Brian Hunt. Mr Hunt ferreted, furrowed, returned triumphant. Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle not only played ten first class games for MCC between 1900-07 but had a bowling average of 1-50.

His sole wicket, and how could Hails of Hartlepool have been doubted, was that of a fellow medical man. He was Dr William Gilbert Grace.

Several other matters demand attention but must perforce wait a week. Space only to record what Eric Smallwood from Middlesbrough discovered was his birthday viewing on Eurosport last week. "British Eurosport News", he adds, was principally a familiar ball game beginning with f.