ANDREWS House, perhaps not one of the region’s better known railway stations, but one of the more attractive, takes its name from the pit which formerly dug deep out the back. On old maps, says the porter, the station site was merely identified as “manure siding”.

They could hardly have called the new place Manure Siding, he says, and for reasons undemanding of explanation.

It is impossible to argue.

Just off the road from Stanley to Gateshead, Andrews House and the nearby Marley Hill engine shed are the headquarters of the Tanfield Railway, shifting coal since 1725 and now described as “a showcase for the North-East’s rich railway heritage”. Not only is it the 175th anniversary of the re-laying of the branch, but the last weekend in June was designated “Carnival”

– bouncy castle, bunting, balloons and (said the posters) a chance to say hello to Causey the Clown.

The locomotives’ smoke box doors had jolly faces, too, though any resemblance to a well-known tank engine with No 1 on the side was doubtless coincidental.

The eternal appeal, of course, is equally in the smell and the sound: “Proper little chuffing noises,” said the lady of the house, approvingly.

While track work continues near the former East Tanfield colliery, the line now runs the couple of miles between Causey Arch in the south and Sunniside, crossing the County Durham/Gateshead boundary, though without recourse to border guards. Some would doubtless prefer it otherwise.

The locos in steam were called Sir Cecil A Cochrane, named after a former chief engineer of the Newcastle and Gateshead Gas Company which owned it, and Alan, who could have been just about anyone, but was also the real name of Causey the Clown.

The carriages, replica third class, were authentically done out like an early Primitive Methodist chapel and every bit as uncomfortable. A birthday party had booked an entire carriage, the porters back and forth with the booze.

A concessionary all-day ticket is just £5, a bargain not least when compared to the price of a pint and a bottle of water – £5.20 – at the Causey Arch Inn.

It was a lovely day.

SO first we headed north, the down side of Sunniside that a dog had left its unwelcome calling card on the platform, the fireman’s shovel used for a purpose that with justification might be considered indra dig.

Don’t they fry eggs on those?

“It’s the same dog walker every time,” said the fireman.

Thereafter back down to Causey Arch, the station taking its name from the nearby railway bridge, built using Roman technology and now the world’s oldest.

The first attempt is said to have collapsed into the River Team below. Fearing that the second was about to go the same way, it’s said, the engineer – an inspired, but unfortunate gentleman called Ralph Wood – threw himself from the parapet ahead of the fall. The bridge stands yet, approaching its 300th birthday.

Some splendid valley walks, too, the only problem was that we’d been misinformed about running times and had to walk back to Andrews House and to Causey the Clown. Like so many more of his red nosed calling, Causey seemed hacked off.

The engine shed, there since 1835 and said little to have changed, housed locos with names like Twizell, Victor and – a little more prosaically – Reneshaw Ironworks No 6.

The carriage shed was housing an exhibition by Gateshead Model Aircraft Club, its wings presumably clipped a bit.

The station building is also home to nesting birds, who appear not to reciprocate the hospitality. “The little buggers have crapped on the leaflets,” said a poor porter, and hurried off to get replacements.

The Northern Echo:

Another ride to Sunniside, a trackside walk back to Andrews House, some apple pie, some more deep breaths. It runs most days during the school holidays and, honestly, it’s smashing.

LOCALS’ interest, we looked into the exhibition at Middleton Tyas Village Hall outlining plans for the proposed new shopping centre – or “destination outlet designer village”, whatever one of those may be – up the road at Scotch Corner.

Much of the information boards’ content seemed already to have been in the paper, though the notion of “branded buses” running from nearby towns appeared new. Do they know this in Darlington and Richmond?

There were also photographs of lots of fashionable young things looking greatly enthusiastic about something-or-other. One looked like Sam Cameron, but on reflection probably wasn’t.

A chap from the developers insisted that it would be upmarket – “probably the bottom line would be a top-of-the-range charity shop”

– and that part of the attraction was the DL10 postcode.

“The average household income in DL10 is just below that of London,”

he said, a queue probably forming to insist “Not at our end of DL10, it’s not, mate.” They gave us a surreptitious cup of Nescafe when, on such a day, a pint of Strongarm or at the very least a strawberry Mivvi might have been preferable. Still, it means 800 jobs and it’s not quite in our back yard. DL10 is likely to be in favour.

THE Stokesley Stockbroker is the most loyal, and the most retentive of readers. Goodness knows, he even recalls his debut in these columns, back in 1993 when he sought to pose a Backtrack question about the youngest survivor of the Munich air disaster.

The supposed answer was future Leeds and Arsenal goalkeeper John Lukic, his pregnant mother an air hostess on the doomed plane.

Since John Lukic wasn’t born until December 1960, almost three years later, it would have suggested a remarkable gestation period.

The Stockbroker had riposted with characteristic and unabashed dexterity, claiming it reminded him of Dennis Healey’s famed observation that Labour Party policy-making was like elephants mating: “It takes a long time to get everything together, and then another seven years for it to come to fruition.”

The Northern Echo:

We meet again in Truefitt’s Tap in Northallerton, a new pub behind the White Horse chip shop that’s an outlet for Truefitt’s Brewery in North Ormesby, Middlesbrough.

The ales are absolutely top class; they hope for another bar in Redcar. The local Camra magazine also claims that the Rutson Hospital in Northallerton is about to become the latest Wetherspoons pub.

Thereafter, we adjourn to the Oddfellows Arms, 20 yards from the town cemetery and thus known for generations as the Graveyard.

On the way back to the station, there’s a car with the registration W15 SEE – Wizzy, as it were, and almost certainly owned by someone called Wood.

Chip off the old block, readers may know how Woodsmen earned their nickname.