Silver threads

THERE’S a taxi rank up the street from the office, right outside the Red Lion. Goodness knows how long the poor driver had been waiting to get to the head of the queue.

His face lit up, however, when I asked if he knew the Silverlink Business Park. “Certainly I do,” he said, “through the Tyne Tunnel and just off the A19.”

Well, yes, but there’s also a Silverlink Business Park in Darlington, somewhere half-hidden up Whessoe way. “Never heard of it,” said the driver.

Neither had his controller.

The Silverlink Retail Park, as properly it is known, is tacked onto the end – the business end – of Wallsend. It has 1,500 free car parking spaces, major stores likes Marks & Spencer, Mothercare and Next, a multi-screen Odeon and umpteen food outlets like Big Mac, Frankie and Benni’s and Pizza Hut.

John Prescott, coincidentally, was pictured astride a motor bike up there in Saturday’s paper. However ennobled, however beaming, old Prezza always looks like he’s offering a symbolic two fingers to the world.

The Silverlink Business Park, the one to which I wanted to go, has a small sign, a double-glazing place and units to rent at just £5,000 a year.

The taxi driver thought there might be a workmen’s caff somewhere in the vicinity, too.

He was very good about it, admitted that he might have been able to knock off for the day had there really been a booking to north Tyneside.

Instead the fare, including waiting and return, amounted to £7.60.

I gave him a tenner, told him to buy himself a pint. He went back to Go with a smile on his face. Silver lining, or what?

SILVERLINK in Darlington is also where the STL Northern League magazine is printed (and very competitively, by Addo). Goodness knows why, but the April issue – the one being collected – reveals that it’s 19 years today since Benny Hill died, alone in a rented apartment. Despite his wealth, he’d had two marriage proposals rejected and never owned a house or a car.

SILVER Link, originally No 2509, was the first of the A4 class of streamlined steam locomotive that was to include the Mallard.

Though it has both Newcastle and Darlington connections – once shedded at Heaton, just down the line from Wallsend; scrapped at Darlington, that great, lugubrious, locomotive graveyard – the reason for the naming of the business parks is uncertain.

Nor is there any explanation why an out-of-the-way little place in Darlington should have the same name as its lustrous, silver-spooned big brother.

On September 29, 1935, at any rate, Silver Link broke all previous steam traction records, hitting 112mph and provoking the rival LNER and LMS companies into what might be supposed steam wars.

It was also the subject of art deco posters celebrating King George V’s silver jubilee and featured briefly in that splendid film Oh Mr Porter.

Though Darlington’s torches served only to illumine its end, the name of Silver Link has more recently appeared on the side of engine number 60019, originally named Bittern and one of six A4s to be preserved.

Restored to the original garter blue, Bittern now runs with the nameplates of the long-gone Dominion of New Zealand, originally 60013.

It’s all very confusing.

SO from Silver Link to tenuous link. Last Saturday at Newton Aycliffe’s match, the Northern League presented an award to 17- year-old David Sherrington from Stanley, County Durham, for becoming the first person this season to watch games on all 42 grounds.

David’s a railway enthusiast.

Brian, his dad, is a train driver. They couldn’t stay for a glass of something after the match because Dominion of New Zealand (nee Bittern, formerly Silver Link and one or two other things) was heading down – or possibly up – the East Coast main line.

“You can hardly move for photographers on the bridges,” someone reported.

Final whistle blown, Brian and David caught up with her at Plawsworth, north of Durham. It may be a pretty long tangent from a taxi rank in Darlington, but it’s a smashing picture. Thanks, Brian.

STILL more or less on the rails, Radio 4’s Any Questions was due to be broadcast from Locomotion, the National Railway Museum at Shildon, last Friday evening.

Sadly, the show couldn’t go on. The BBC blamed “transport disruption”, variously said to be a rail fatality down south and that big scrapyard fire near the M1.

Among the 150 or so who still turned up was 82-year-old Darlington councillor Peter Freitag – as did presenter Jonathan Dimbleby, anxious to explain what had happened.

“It was very good of him. I always liked him more than his brother,”

says Peter.

He still has a question, however.

“Most people could hardly have heard of the four south-based people on the panel. If they’re broadcasting from the North-East, why can’t they have North-East personalities, such as yourself?”

Modesty precludes comment. A supplementary, though. When things go wrong, why does it always happen to Shildon?

EVER vigilant, Gadspies continue to keep their eyes peeled on the column’s behalf. Both Geoff Howe and John Briggs in Darlington draw attention to a sign in the window of the town centre Golden Cock pub – “two drinks for the price of two” – while Maurice Galley notes that outside the Kings Head in Crook they’re advertising “real chips”.

This presumably, is to differentiate them, from the cardboard (or keg) variety.

Out walking at the Aykley Woods picnic area in Durham, back of police headquarters, John Heslop was delighted to discover a collection of wildlife photographs, each accompanied by the photographer’s name.

This one below, he supposes, must have been taken by a diminutive policeman.

They never should have abolished height restrictions.

…and finally, David Walsh – another who misses little – adds ANL 1, belonging to Guisborough builder Arthur Little, to our collection of personalised number plates.

“Unlike most number plate egoists who display their plates on a BMW, Porsche, Jaguar or Roller, Arthur has his on his iconic – and rather beaten up – white van, the symbol of builders everywhere.”

Equally rank and file – as probably they say back on that taxi queue outside the Red Lion – the column returns next week.