DID you see them on the box? Look North last Tuesday, the National Railway Museum at Shildon glorying in millions of visitors, millions of sold Mallard mugs and millions of pairs of Mallard socks. Carol Malia particularly liked the idea of Mallard socks. Good on them, of course, but what of the Head of Steam railway museum, nine miles along the line at Darlington?

We went the following day. A party of primary school children was on its way out, presumably not having paid to get in, leaving – for the next hour – precisely two elderly ladies and an overflow car park that may redefine optimism.

The museum’s uncertain future is reflected in Northern Echo cuttings on the notice board. “Running out of steam,” says one headline, “Railway museum could be sidelined to save costs,” says another.

There’s an Echo editorial, too, written last November: “It is unthinkable that a town which claims to be the birthplace of the railways should lose its railway museum.”

Blaming government cuts, the council will cease to fund it by March 2016 and is seeking other bodies to take over the building – the major part of North Road station. One of Head of Steam’s biggest problems is that, unlike Locomotion in Shildon and most of the best things in life, it’s not free.

Adult admission is £4 95, over 60s £3 75. “People got most indignant at having to pay £4 95,” an attendant tells the two ladies.

Another is that nothing moves, save for the attendance graph, and nothing stirs save maybe for the occasional tea bag at reception. The café has closed. Watt’s what, all that steams around here is the kettle.

Still a stop on the Bishop Auckland line, the station once had a WH Smith’s bookstall, a refreshment room and a stove-fired waiting room around which we’d gather after childhood evenings at the baths.

Back then it also served the Barnard Castle branch, about which the North Eastern Railway Association has mounted a fascinating little exhibition ahead of the 50th anniversary of the line’s closure on November 28 this year.

Much else is worthwhile, much interesting – particularly on Darlington’s industrial history. “The town that changed the world,” says a short introductory film. There’s the original Locomotion, the sign that famously marked Stainmore Summit, much more of a quirky nature but little of a compelling one.

The two ladies leave, the unpopulated old station echoing like the last train to Middleton-in-Teesdale is heading past Hopetown Junction.

Unthinkable or otherwise, the museum is being overtaken as surely as a fish train on the slow line by the Flying Scotsman on the fast.

It is itself in danger of becoming just a footnote in history; Head of Steam is evaporating.

A WEEK previously, perchance, the column is itself at Locomotion, and when another primary school party is visiting.

The guide is telling them that Queen Victoria was the first monarch to travel by train and the only passenger to enjoy what these days might be termed en-suite facilities. “The rest of them had to learn to control themselves,” he adds, perhaps euphemistically. Is this what’s called toilet training?

BITTERN moves, though probably not as fast as the tickets to ride behind her – a garter blue femme fatale– on the Wensleydale Railway last Saturday.

She’s one of the A4 Pacific steam locomotives which, reunited, drew so many to Shildon. Last Saturday, for two reasons a little confusingly, Bittern became part of the Swaledale Festival.

Partly it was unlikely because Swaledale is the next dale to the north, a sort of parallel universe, partly because the festival, in its 42nd year, primarily celebrates music and the arts. That was the clever bit. If every picture tells a story then the thronged platform at Leeming Bar station confirmed the biggest crowd puller in festival history and if ever there were music to the ears, it was the sound of an A4’s klaxon amid the stirring countryside.

Further north they sing of the candy man’s trumpet that fair steals the heart away. Not half as surely or as seductively as a streak’s whistle.

The return to Redmire costs £20, £2 more than the chance to listen to the Royal Northern Sinfonia, twice what they charge for the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and as for the abstract art exhibition at Richmond, folk can get into that for nothing. We arrive at 8.45am, the first football-free Saturday since last July. Hail thee, festival day.

They have use of the nearby Vale of Mowbray pie factory car park, the whiff of steam initially overcome by the aroma, little less alluring, of a good pork pie.

A chap is cheerfully polishing the engine’s nameplate, a fairly obvious anagram of Britten if not of Benjamin.

“It’s a good job it’s not Union of South Africa,” he says. The carriages have girls’ names. Emma, Stephanie, Madison. Madison?

That’s a Christian name? We’re in Rosie, which sounds like the sort of carriage that Thomas the Tank Engine would push about (and, come to think, probably was).

The extraordinary thing is that there seem to be so many steam virgins aboard, good middle-aged people who’ve simply never before felt the earth move, never had the pleasure. Better-days diesels hulk outside of the station, awaiting resurrection. Maturity beyond his years, a little lad calls them something unkind. Thomas called them diseasels.

It’s an hour each way, half an hour at Redmire to shoot with the photographers. Just after Leyburn a musical quartet appears, the squeeze box man dressed like Compo from Last of the Summer Wine.

The passengers are appreciative, the cows skidaddle. Everywhere folk wave, as they have done at steam engines ever since Locomotion No 1 advanced apprehensively from Shildon to Stockton on September 27, 1825. This is the crest of a wave, steam’s unceasing appeal never greater. A lovely morning; Bittern sweet.

SINCE we’re just a couple of miles away, we head from the station for a lunchtime pint in the Old Black Swan at Bedale where – as we mentioned a fortnight back – 61-year-old landlord Peter Bell is a very serious cyclist. Who else might bike to work, and by a pretty circuitous route, when home’s in Bishop Auckland?

Two Sundays ago he took on the 112-mile challenge of every Lake District pass, many fearful, hoping to beast ten hours. On Saturday he’s off out somewhere, probably on his bike. “He did it,” says the barman, “but he says never again.”

...and finally, I am invited to address the members of St Aidan’s Mothers’ Union at Chilton, near Ferryhill – the church talk, no railway lines whatever. The leader – the acting leader, the real leader having sensibly taken herself off elsewhere – says how pleased they are to have so notorious a speaker and, detecting a slight dismay, adds that she means “notorious for all the right reasons.” May notoriety be a force for good? Chambers thinks not. “Publicly known, now only in a bad sense. Infamous,” it defines.

Kenneth Williams minced at once to mind “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me”, and even at St Aidan’s Mothers’ Union.