WHETHER or not the Express Omnibus Company lived wholly up to its name, it could certainly shift a bit.

Back in the 1930s, the timetable allowed just 27 minutes to get from Easington Lane via the Pittingtons to Durham Market Place, 19 to cover the eight miles or so from Littletown and another three minutes to reach the railway station.

“They had flying machines,” someone recalls, perhaps seduced by time’s wings.

The company was started in 1924 by Spennymoor miner’s son William Showler, particularly served the area east of Durham City and included among its chocolate brown fleet bus models like the Dennis Lancet, the Commer Invader and, quick as you like, the Reo Sprinter.

When it became Durham and District in 1950, effectively part of United Automobile Services, its 19 buses were able to run every ten minutes, 8am to midnight, throughout Big Meeting day.

The history’s recalled in a new book by David Holliday and Bob Kell, the former also the author of a 2007 history of the Bishop Auckland-based OK bus company and last encountered at 6.30am on a cold January day in 2012, when the OK made a return to the route between Crook and Darlington.

By then the OK was owned by Go North East, Arriva’s regional rival. “Until it gets to the point of fighting in the streets, I think Go North East are doing exactly what the Competition Commission would want,” said David at the time.

It didn’t last. Go North East went, peacefully, the towns not big enough for both of them.

Either side of the war, Durham City was served by bus companies like Gypsy Queen, Invincible, Diamond and ABC which – easy – was Aaron, Binks and Coulson from Ferryhill.

For Showler, it proved just the ticket. He prospered, moved to Eshwood Hall in New Brancepeth, became chairman of Durham City Chamber of Trade and a worshipful master at the Lodge.

The company was valued at £52,000, an awful lot of money in 1950, but he died, aged 56, less than year after its sale.

n "The Express”, evocatively illustrated, costs £14.50 from MDS Booksales – sales@mdsbooks.co.uk or Freepost SK2 162, Glossop SK13 8YF.

LAST week’s column welcomed the impending fall of Shildon’s egregious arches. A headline in the Town Crier, the local community newspaper, supposes them “Iconic arches” instead and – supported by hundreds on a Facebook petition – demands a reprieve.

The excellent and appropriately forenamed Archie Mackay, who not only works on the Crier, but heads the South Uist branch of the Shildon FC supporters club, reckons that Durham County Council’s claims that consulted residents were “generally supportive” are misleading. There was hardly consultation at all, he says.

The Facebook page also embraces a most revealing county council report claiming that the arches – erected to mark the Millennium and thus remarkably short spanned – were unfit from the start. “The lighting on them has never worked and the quality was poor, being rusty on installation,” it adds, remarkably.

The cost of refurbishment – get this – would be £120,000. The cost of demolition is itself expected to be between £35,000-£40,000.

“Many residents thought they should not have gone up in the first place, were not appropriate and were imposed on them,” the report adds.

Then another email, announcing a stay of execution and “further consultation”, arrives from the county council. “We’ve been asked to look again at whether the arches could be kept,” says Brian Stephens, Shildon councillor and cabinet member for neighbourhoods and local partnerships.

In these straitened times, would it really cost £120,000 to refurbish the egregious edifices? Yes, confirms the county, it would. And the neck-end of £40,000 to demolish them? Yes, there’d have to be road closures and all sorts.

Before the stay of execution, says Archie, demolition had already begun. He also invites the column to add to the petition, but that would be arch-hypocrisy.

ASSOCIATED town centre “improvements” in Shildon come ahead of the Flying Scotsman’s sojourn at the National Railway Museum – a wonderful free attraction – at the end of July. Altogether smaller scale, a Durham Amateur Football Trust exhibition to mark my 20-year tenure as chairman of the Northern League will officially be opened at the museum at 11am next Tuesday by Councillor Henry Nicholson, old friend and good bloke. It runs until the end of June – at the opening or thereafter, all are most welcome.

THE column on the death of the eminent neurologist Lord Walton of Detchant – Derwentside born, Spennymoor educated – stirred memories for Geoff Carr of his own Spennymoor area childhood.

Jim Carr, Geoff’s dad, taught woodwork at Middlestone Moor school where Herbert Walton – the great physician’s peas-in-a-pod father – was headmaster. Unless they went to grammar school, pupils stayed there until they were 15.

Geoff and his dad would catch the bus to school from Spennymoor, but would sometimes be offered a lift back in the head’s 1939 Ford 8 – he being the only one able to afford a car.

“He was very much of his generation, having been severely wounded in the First World War,” Geoff recalls. “To a five-year-old he looked really formidable, but we quickly learned that he was a lovely chap – a disciplinarian, but fair, and an absolute gentleman.”

Jim Carr and John Walton later became friends, chiefly through golf. Jim was Bishop Auckland’s captain in 1970; Lord Walton played Bamburgh until well into his 80s.

The woodwork teacher had also made his friend a table lamp, carved from a snooker table leg from the former Central Methodist Institute in Spennymoor. It still illuminated his London flat, a light along Memory Lane.

JIM CARR died in 2011, aged 92, in the knowledge that many of his pupils had gone on to become craftsmen or entrepreneurs – “actually doing better than many who had gone on to grammar school,” says Geoff. It recalls my own time at Bishop Auckland Grammar when Alf Bibby, the kindly woodwork master, awarded eight out of 100 for what purported to be a matchbox holder. The eight marks, he wrote in the annual report, were because Amos had spelt his name correctly on the back of the bit of wood.

...AND finally, we told on several occasions last summer of former Army officer Mike Tierney’s ever-aborted attempts to row – with a mate – from Newcastle to Denmark. Intended beneficiaries included the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation in memory of Mike’s sister Claire, a football referee and former secretary of Gateshead FC.

Every time they tried to dip an oar in the water, the weather turned against them. Winter’s storm abated, they hoped to embark yesterday – from Eyemouth – on the 670km crossing.

Then they heard the gale warnings. “It would have been simply impossible not to mention incredibly stupid,” says Mike.

On Facebook, a friend offers cautious consolation – “The conclusion is obvious, God hates you” – to which Mike swiftly responds.

“I’m not even sure I believe in her any more.”