OUR friends at the Stainmore Railway Company continue to go up in the world. The three-day event to celebrate the trans-Pennine line’s 150th anniversary – August 27 to 29 – has been boosted by a £33,400 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

It’s also the signal for steam traction to return to Kirkby Stephen East railway station for the first time since the old South Durham and Lancashire Union route closed to through traffic in 1962.

Better yet, the newly formed Stainmore Railway Trust has bought a two-mile stretch of the route between Barnard Castle and Tebay in the hope that it will become part of a long distance footpath.

It’s also planned soon to erect a replica sign on the 1,370ft Stainmore Summit, one of the wildest places on the railways.

“We’re overjoyed that this section of the line has been purchased,” says Mark Keefe, of the SRC. “The trust aims to ensure the protection of this beautiful countryside and to preserve an important part of our history.”

Much has happened in and around Kirkby Stephen East since the nearderelict station was taken over by the SRC in 1997. The Heritage Lottery grant, and other substantial funding, will ensure that entry to the celebrations will be free.

The star attraction at the restored station will be the return of steam locomotive 78019, shedded at Kirkby Stephen for five years in the Fifties.

There’ll be regular steam passenger trains, classic fairground rides and – among much else – a re-enactment of the 1861 opening ceremony.

“It’s the culmination of 14 years hard work and investment.

We can guarantee three days of entertainment, excitement and participation,”

says SRC chairman Mike Thompson, a hospital consultant from Sedgefield who took early retirement to drive the project forward.

His wife Sue, still practising, is the company secretary.

Among their requested wedding presents, it may be recalled, was a cement mixer.

Full details of the celebrations are at stainmore150.co.uk IN time for the local government elections, veteran Darlington councillor Peter Freitag is back from a break in New Zealand. “I drove 2,850 miles, not bad for a man of my age,” he reports.

Peter’s 81. “When I got back, there were 149 messages on my Blackberry,” he adds, youthfully.

So will he again enter the lists? “I have yet to make my mind up,” he says, “but I suppose for the good of the party…”

Peter is a Liberal Democrat.

KEN Stephenson, pictured left, well-known former County Durham cricketer and mayoral macebearer at both Durham and Darlington, died 12 years ago this month.

As a note from his widow Maureen underlines, Ken was a man who made quite an impression – his heavyweight ceremonial gavel used to knock lumps out of the civic furnishings.

The gavel was nicknamed Maxwell, as in silver hammer. Barrie Lamb, Darlington’s mayor in 1989-90, decided that something more decorous might be in order and got Railway Preservation Society colleague Gavin East to carve an apple wood answer. Ken called it Gavin, as in Gavin the Gavel, and added it to his collection.

Maureen, at any rate, was watching the Flog It television programme when presenter Adam Partridge mentioned that he, too, collected gavels. An offer of two brass beauties from Ken’s collection – “I knew they’d be going to a good home” – was accepted only on condition of a charitable donation.

By no means a knock-down price, St Teresa’s Hospice in Darlington is the beneficiary.

EMERSON Muschamp Bainbridge, one of the great names of North-East retailing, will be remembered on Saturday back where he belonged.

Bainbridge was from a staunchly Methodist family in Weardale, left at 13 to seek his fortune as a drapery apprentice in Newcastle, but would walk home when annual holidays allowed.

In 1838, still just 21, he began a small drapery business in Market Street, Newcastle and – employing Methodist principles of fair dealing and decent treatment of staff – saw it grow to become Bainbridge’s, now part of the John Lewis group.

Angela Airey, his great great granddaughter, will talk about his life – “Methodism, money and social mobility” – at the Eastgate Methodist chapel, which Bainbridge built in the 1880s in memory of his father. Mrs Airey and her husband John also wrote a family history of the Bainbridges in 1979.

The event is organised by the North-East Methodist History Society.

Admission to non-members is £2.

…and finally, David Thompson in Eaglescliffe saw last week’s reference to the Sunderland Flying Boat and was about to point out that there’s a pub of the same name in Seaburn when he decided first to check the internet. Sadly, the flying boat has come to earth. Now – “all green and Pongo-like,” says David – it’s been renamed the Royal Marine.

It is, he adds, a great pity.