TWO minutes late, and thus wholly forgiven, the 11.20 train eases gently into Bishop Auckland. Just four others step down into the sunshine.

The Lorelei aroma of bacon sandwiches hangs in the air. On the single platform, two men are working on an attractive, time-line mural of the town’s history. One’s our old friend Bob McManners, retired GP and prince among polymaths, the other his pal Bob Olley.

“The only problem,” says Doc McManners, “is that people keep on telling us we’ve missed off their Uncle Archie.”

Among his other favourite subjects are the pitmen painters, on which he now lectures internationally – and, the other day, at Tiverton in Devon.

Bob likes to tell them that he’s originally from Ferryhill – “the centre of the known universe.” After three or four such references, an audience member introduced himself as an astro-physicist.

“I’m sorry to tell you,” he said, “that all relevant research concludes that the centre of the known universe is a black hole.”

END of the line, Bishop railway station is now perfectly pleasant, happily well-maintained, cared for and about. There’s a travel centre (which sells midget gems and things), a warm and comfortable waiting room and the bacon butty emporium.

That it’s not what it was – how could it ever be? – is the reason that we’re on the mid-morning train from Darlington. Bishop Auckland station was unique.

It had four platforms on three sides, thought to be the only triangular station in the land. There was a spacious booking hall, a restaurant, three signal boxes, a covered bridge, crowds.

There were trains up Weardale, into Teesdale and spectacularly across Stainmore to Cumbria. They left for Durham and for Darlington, for Crook and for Tow Law, for Ferryhill and, onward, to Hartlepool. Summer specials jaunted to Blackpool; football specials left, seemingly annually, for two-blue triumph at Wembley. The adjacent goods station had 12 platforms.

The steamy, slam-door bustle of it all is evoked in a new 28-page booklet produced for the recently formed Bishop Auckland Station History Group by Gerald Slack, a man so manifestly unassuming that, save for the copyright line, the book doesn’t even carry his name.

Interesting chap, though.

HE was a miner’s son from South Church, on the town’s outskirts, became chief operating officer of the mighty Taylor Woodrow construction group, counts among his purple passions the thus-far fruitless quest for a sighting of the Loch Ness monster.

Much of South Church in the post-war years seemed little to have changed since Victorian times, low yards and unmade, insanitary back streets. “It was rat infested, we had to move upstairs. Eventually we got a house in Newton Aycliffe. We thought it was like a palace by comparison.”

He attended Bishop Auckland Grammar School, used the station – among other things –for the annual workmen’s club trip to Redcar. “I remember the station as a vibrant place, it felt like a very important place,” says Gerald. “I think in a way we were quite proud of it. I don’t think that the younger generation realises how big it was.”

Some branches had been pruned in the 1950s; Beeching lopped most of the rest. For 50 years, all that’s sometimes precariously remained is the line through Darlington to Saltburn.

Gerald’s now 63, happily back in Aycliffe Village, enthused by the challenge of establishing Bishop Auckland’s place in railway history.

There’s inadvertent talk of its being sidelined by Darlington and by Shildon, of building a platform, of being on the right lines. It may be his station in life.

The group has found, and cherishes, the 100-year-old Bishop Auckland National Union of Ralwaymen’s banner, plans a railway memorial garden near the station – “real railway seats everything,” he says – has designed LNER-style posters showing the old station in all its improbable glory.

They’ve also been given a treasure trove of memorabilia, including a September 1847 timetable of the line from Cold Rowley, up beyond Consett, through Bishop Auckland to Darlington and Redcar. The journey took four-and-a-quarter hours; booking office doors, said the timetable, would be closed when the train was in sight.

He’s also on the track of a famous painting by John Dolphin of Flying Scotsman crossing Newton Cap viaduct.

“We just want to see Bishop Auckland back on a page in history,” says Gerald. “If you look at its strategic importance – coal from the Crook area, limestone from Weardale down to Teesside – you see how vital a part the lines and the station played in the economy.”

The book also recalls that the town had a steam engine builder, Lingford Gardiner, the Lingford family perhaps better known for its baking powder. They made bicycles, too, most memorably the curiously named Rational Umpire.

Gerald tracked one down. “Basically it was just scrap and they wanted around £200 for it. I decided against.”

He has also completed a book on the Stockton and Darlington Railway – Origins and Legacy – and contemplates others with a west Durham flavour.

“I’m trying to be a populist writer,” he admits. “I want to create a spark of interest in the community. We have to broadcast what all this is about.”

We share a nostalgic couple of hours. Late lunch, inevitably I miss the train.

Bishop Auckland and the Railways is published by GSL. Details on the Station History Group’s Facebook page

LAST week’s column had offered a brief taster of all this, recalling Saturday lunchtime specials from Bishop Auckland to Newcastle that usually were headed by class B1 steam engines – particularly 61023, named Hirola, or 61024, Ajax.

While the latter offered the opportunity for a few pan-scrubbed plays on words, the memory was mistaken. John Briggs and David Burniston, both in Darlington, point out that the loco was actually called Addax.

There were 40 named locomotives at the top of the B1 order, all but one after antelopes. The first, built in Darlington, was 61000 – Springbok in honour of a visit by South African prime minister Jan Smuts.

Others had names like Wildebeest, Sassaby, Umseke, Pronghorn, Chamois and Gnu – the shortest name in BR history.

Amid them all was 61036, Ralph Assheton. Had they exhausted the antelopes? How did Ralph Assheton get there?

An internet search reveals just one relevant reference – save for the Assheton Arms, near Clitheroe in Lancashire – and it’s oddly appropriate.

It’s from the Sydney Morning Herald of September 1946, when Winston Churchill had just lost the general election and the Conservatives (on this occasion) were indulging in ritual introspection.

“The Conservative machine,” someone said, “was like a Victorian donkey cart compared with the modern car.”

The ingrates blamed not just poor Winnie, but the party chairman, Sir Ralph Assheton – now remembered only as the odd one out amid a great herd of hollow-horned ruminants.

Not so much an antelope as an interlope, suggests David Burniston. He may never be forgiven for it.