BACK in the dear gone days of Timothy Hackworth Junior Mixed and Infants, universally abridged to Tin Tacks, a bright young thing called Margaret Wanless was almost always top of the class. The class embraced precisely 50 of us; things were oft-overcrowded in Shildon.

For her admirable efforts, Margaret would be rewarded with a 7/6d book token, personally subscribed by the magnificent Mr Coates.

The unspoken expectation was that the token gesture would be spent on something of what elders liked to term an improving nature: one or more of the Bronte sisters, or Louisa M Alcott, perhaps. Little Womanly, anyway.

In 1957, however, something wholly unexpected happened. Margaret was second and I was top, which wasn’t bad for a kid who couldn’t see the blackboard.

Mr Coates, happily still with us, duly presented the 7/6 book token. An extra three shillings bought the Ian Allan Locospotters’ Annual “combined” edition, a childhood dream come true.

Tom Coates was much too good a teacher to say anything, but clearly thought that for something of an improving nature, there was distinct room for improvement.

Ian Allan was the man said to have invented trainspotting, the man who launched a Locospotters’ Club which attracted 260,000 members and whose regional Locospotters’ Abc’s, ultimately dog-eared, sold millions at half-a-crown a time.

Back at Timothy Hackworth juniors we’d assumed him to be at least 150. He died last week, aged 94.

He was a Southern Region man, dreamed of becoming general manager, lost a leg in a camping accident when he was 15 and knew he’d fail the medical for traffic apprentices. “They needed at least two legs,” he said.

He joined the press office instead, published his first Abc in 1943 – 2,000 copies, £42 print bill, 1/6d apiece – saw the hobby’s popularity surge. “Trainspotters weren’t always thought of as anoraks,” he once said. “They were quite respectable in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

“Trainspotting was an innocent pursuit. We only ever had one criminal case, I think, involving an older Locospotters’ Club member. The sight and sound of a steam locomotive in full cry was normally excitement enough for anyone in trousers, short or long.”

The business boomed. Ian Allan not only published books and magazines, but ran a travel agency, a car dealership, an organic gardening supplier’s and even a Masonic regalia shop. He was awarded the OBE in 1995.

It’s all quite coincidental. From October 23-25 this year, the Wensleydale Railway stages Revolving Words, a festival of railway literature. It’ll be based in Bedale. Part of the build-up, vaguely literary types have been invited to contribute a blog piece on their favourite railway book – which is why some may already have seen the story of Margaret Wanless and the Ian Allan Locospotters’ Annual.

Margaret emigrated to Australia many years ago. Something to do with being beaten into second place by one of the Amos twins? She resumed pole position the year after.

VAL DOONICAN’S passing last week recalls the lifelong friendship with the wonderful Fr John Caden, Sedgefield’s Roman Catholic parish priest for almost half a century until his death in March 2013.

The young Fr Caden was a chaplain at Sunderland Empire, became a friend to the famous but with none more greatly than the Irish crooner – with a group called The Four Ramblers in 1953, when first they met.

They reunited at least annually. Fr Caden baptised Doonican’s children and married his daughter. Doonican it was who persuaded him to write his memoirs – a little immodestly called Game, Set and Match with a nod to Tony Blair, the priest’s doubles partner.

In 1964, he’d been at St Patrick’s in Dipton, near Stanley, when a pyromaniac razed the church to the ground. Doonican, by then famous, at once offered to stage a benefit concert. They filled Newcastle City Hall, adding to the bill a little known comedian called Les Dawson whom Doonican swore would go on a long way.

Neither of them opened the church garden party, though. That was Helen Shapiro.

TEN years ago they invited me to launch the Durham Dales Breathe Easy Club, one of 120 such clubs beneath the wing of the British Lung Foundation. Last week they invited me back; now there are 230. The turn-out – best for ages, they insisted – included a trainee medic. It’s doubtful if she’s much wiser about matters pulmonary, but now – having had to ask – she knows what a netty is. You learn something every day.

A FURTHER example of the ways of a small world, an email arrives on the morning of the Breathe Easy talk – at Bishop Auckland Methodist Church – reporting the retirement of the Rev Keith Phipps after 35 years Methodist ministry. The last ten have been in Bishop, decades before that in Sunderland and Northallerton. Keith, lovely chap, has a farewell service at Bishop Auckland at 6pm this Sunday. We hope to be there.

THE buses from Darlington to Bishop and beyond are now equipped with satnav equipment which announces every stop in advance. It’s very useful, though new technology does occasionally revert to old ways. When, for example, did Dufay Paints last add lustre to Shildon? It must be 30 years. When did St Paul’s church last bring Toronto folk to their knees? It must be nearer 50. Most disturbingly, however, passengers headed along West Auckland Road in Shildon are reminded that the next stop is the cemetery. If it’s all the same with Arriva, I think I’ll stay on the bus.

A few miles away in Witton Park, there’s comforting evidence of the after-life. Down towards the river there’s an area officially known as Paradise: in Paradise there are three building plots for sale.

STILL with one foot in the grave, a self-flagellating piece in the summer issue of County Durham’s Camra magazine underlines one of journalism’s most venerable adages: never underestimate longevity.

The previous Durham Drinker had recalled events of 1979. None, it said, would still be behind the same bar. They were mistaken.

There’s Michael Webster at the magnificent Victoria in Durham, Jeff Rayner – at the Dun Cow in Sedgefield since 1974 – and, longest serving of all, Tiffy Siddle, who’s been at the Cowshill Hotel at the top of Weardale for around half a century.

It was Walton Siddle, her late husband, who – famously, apocryphally – offered some pretty abrupt advice to a party of German tourists seeking directions.

The whole thing recalls a long-gone story in a 1970s column about an 87-year-old parish sexton in Wensleydale – Patrick Brompton, memory suggests. The oldest grave digger in Britain, we asserted, six feet below contradiction.

The ink was barely dry before someone rang to report an 88-year-old, in turn interring. Constable Burton, probably, he dug deep in the next village.

OUT of the frying pan, last week’s note on the great Spennymoor artist Norman Cornish recalled Berriman’s fish and chip van, which Norman indelibly painted. Ray Price in Chester-le-Street points out that the van never actually sold fish and chips – it was fishcakes, and often from the same frying pot. “In the days before the Trades Description Act, we often wondered what was in the fish cakes,” says Ray. “Apart from potatoes, that is.”

...AND finally, Tony Ford in Northallerton spotted in the High Street a white van emblazoned with promotional messages for a local firm of solicitors. Wondering why the legal profession had joined a nation of white van men, he walked around the back and saw a further message, in red: “No lawyers or valuables are kept in this vehicle overnight.”