ON the wall at home, next to the painting of Union of South Africa getting its pipe at York station, is a framed certificate giving all manner of tech-spec for the Tornado.

It’s what you got 15-or-so years ago for sponsoring a nut or a bolt or something when the great locomotive was being pieced together in Darlington. Memory suggests that the nut cost £40.

Since then there’s not been so much as a toot from Tornado – not even a card at Christmas – but it was still with proprietorial interest that we watched 60163 on the Settle and Carlisle line last televised Tuesday and, two days later, joined the 8.25 from Appleby to Skipton.

“Can we not go to Center Parcs instead?” a boy of eight wheedles to his waiting parents. You fear for the nation’s future.

Appleby station’s lovely. A plaque commemorates Dr Eric Treacy, the railway loving former Bishop of Wakefield, who died there while photographing steam engines and (in so far as it is possible so to do) probably died happy.

Tornado arrives tender first and immaculate, a diesel called Royal Diamond – or Rough Diamond, or some such – between it and the train. Where was Rough Diamond when the telly tribes teemed? On the other end, out of sight.

Great idea, three days of scheduled steam services mark the completion of a massive project to reopen the section between Appleby and Carlisle after a landslip last winter. Fares are normal, running times extended, demand huge and about half the seats unreserved.

“We even had United Utilities down here last night,” says a Geordie railwayman to his mate.

“What,” says his mate, “haven’t we paid the watter rates again?”

Photographers throng, sheep scarper. With diesel multiple units (DMU) they don’t give a baa humbug. Though the chap who complains that the steam’s obscuring the view of Whernside seems rather to be missing the point, Tornado – a force ten mechanical marvel – appears to be making little of the I-think-I-can effort of former times, not even humping across Blea Moor.

Could it be that 60163 is on this occasion all smoke and mirrors, and that it’s Rough Diamond firing on best coal? The journalistic forerunners who suppose the Pennines to have been snowcapped either have better eyesight, or a better imagination, than I have.

On through grey-glorious Garsdale, raining as always, through Dent, England’s highest, through heaven-and-Hellifield and at 10.15am into Skipton, where the queue for unreserved seats on the return working already resembles Binns’ Boxing Day sale, stretching 150 yards to the fire station.

It leaves at 11am, many obliged to join a duplicate diesel multiple which follows ten minutes later, like a bloke with a brush and shovel behind the Co-op horse.

Querulousness courses the carriages like the Ribble in spate. Folk compare notes on the myriad miles they’ve driven, the countless hours they’ve queued, threaten (optimistically) to demand their money back.

“It’s common knowledge that Northern Rail is the worst train operating company in the country,” says one chap, and then repents his ingratitude. “OK, second worst after Southern, obviously.”

The store horse appears to have lost a shoe, a further delay at Kirkby Stephen. Oblivious to his personal safety, the guard announces that it’s due to the train in front. The biblical phrase about coals of fire seems in the circumstances to be appropriate.

At Appleby it’s tipping down, almost no cover and two hours before the next steam service southwards while Tornado and crew get their bait. Outspoken passengers already queue for unspoken seats.

It’s something that Northern Rail will have to consider if the great experiment’s repeated, but I still think that £40 was money wonderfully well spent.

ON the windward side of the Pennines, the Azuma approaches apace. Built in Newton Aycliffe by Hitachi – Azuma is old Japanese for “East” – the new Virgin trains will enter service next year, cutting up to 22 minutes off the journey from Edinburgh to Kings Cross, much increasing capacity and getting to Middlesbrough, too. In the meantime they’re being put through their paces: a camera carrying reader who asks anonymity spots an Azuma boomer taking a breather at Bank Top.

ANOTHER rail-riding reader forwards the Northern Rail consultation plan which, from December, proposes an hourly service between Bishop Auckland and Darlington and onwards to Saltburn. Save for peak periods, trains between Bishop and Darlington are now two-hourly. Better yet, there’s talk of “cascading” diesel sets from lines in the Manchester area which are being electrified, perhaps finally laying to rest the elderly units long employed. The new timetable’s pretty promising, save for passengers hoping to alight at Teesside Airport. That still just has one train a week.

EVEN those doughty DMUs may have been commodious compared to the vehicles employed on the first ever excursion from Shildon, to Redcar on September 2, 1848. Organised by the Railway Institute, it was a sort of pioneering club trip.

Just discovered, a 1950 booklet marking the centenary of Timothy Hackworth’s death notes that “everything passed off in a comfortable and pleasant manner, with one or two exceptions”.

More than 1,000 people travelled, making an £18 10s profit for the institute, but obliged, said the minute book, “to put up with trucks that were unseated and unswept". Mr George Stephenson, passenger agent, should be spoken to, the minute added.

Two years later, a week before Hackworth’s death, 2,200 made the journey to the coast – first class 1/6d, second class a shilling, profit £50 17s 10d less “one bad half crown”.

All that’s really just an excuse to record that the Prince of Wales tunnel beneath Shildon will have been operational for 175 years on April 19. What are we – especially those of us unlikely to be around for the bicentenary – going to do about it?

MOST buses are now nat-savvy, sat-navvy, each upcoming stop intoned. My blog – mikeamosblog.wordpress.com – has been having a bit of fun with those whose stated location is long gone. The Hippodrome in Shildon, for example, or the Alhambra (honest) in Fishburn. The most dated may be on the Bishop Auckland to Durham route where the Croxdale stop is still announced as “Station”. Croxdale station, ten minutes either way between Durham and Ferryhill on the east coast main line, closed in 1938. The more recent internet reference, “Top ten railway stations in Croxdale, County Durham”, may probably be ignored. Is any ghost stop yet older?