IT was Gordon the blue engine, was it not, who was so pompously puffed up with his own importance – a look-at-me loco, if ever – that his boiler damn near burst?

“Gordon was very big and very proud,” wrote the Rev Wilbert Awdry in the very first of the Thomas the Tank Engine books. Edward shunted silly trucks.

Inanimately, inadvertently, The Flying Scotsman was a bit like that last week – a sort of Gordon Highlander. The Northern Echo, it has reluctantly to be admitted, was complicit in the engine’s ego trip.

When we previewed the so-called Shildon Shed Bash every locomotive on display was mentioned except 69023, Joem.

When in last Monday’s paper we reported the first weekend’s events at Locomotion, the main picture showed four steam engines – none of them Joem – and a secondary illustration five.

The fifth was what Thomas sardonically supposed to be a diseasel. For the Flying Scotsman read Gordon the blue engine; for Edward read Joem.

Yet 69023, the little green giant, is no ordinary Joem at all.

Built in Darlington in 1951, it is the sole survivor of 113 Class J72 locomotives constructed over 54 years. In 1966 it was saved from the scrapyard – by a gentleman whose parents were called Joseph and Emmeline – and ran on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

Seventeen years later it was bought by the North East Locomotive Preservation Group, brought home to Darlington and meticulously, magnificently restored.

At Shildon the Flyer was at the front of a little shuttle service of three guards vans; Joem, perhaps remembering its place, brought up the rear – but clearly that was all too much for an American lady by the coal drops.

“It can’t be the Flying Scotsman, it’s the wrong number,” she protested to her clearly long suffering husband.

“No dear,” he replied, “the Flying Scotsman is at the other end.”

Green Arrow was there, all of a-quiver, Union of South Africa – lightly, politely steaming – The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry which was the diseasel and might almost have filled a column on its own.

Probably the morning crowd was fewer than they’d hoped; probably it didn’t help that the park and ride was at Hardwick Park – ten miles away – or that the Palm Court Café, which elsewhere might have been called a tent, charged £2 for a bottle of water.

It was nostalgically lovely, nonetheless and no matter that some wore T-shirts promoting another attraction at Bishop Auckland. Shildon was Kynren for the day.

Since the little train had to come back the other way, it should also be recorded that for half the time The Flying Scotsman acted as banking engine to Joem, and that 69023 looked pretty pleased about it.

Joem is the little engine that could.

69023 will be spending much of the rest of the summer working the Wensleydale Railway, out of Leeming Bar, and without need of a shove from behind.

It’s coincidental because, a few days earlier, we’d been at one of the occasional open days at the wonderfully restored Scruton station, a couple of miles down the line towards Northallerton.

Long left for dead, it has been resuscitated over eight years by a group of volunteers – many of them villagers – who’ve won a national railway heritage award for their efforts. Open and shut, even the level crossing gates are pristine once again.

“There was no water, no electricity, no water and not even a platform,” recalled Keith Walker, immaculately attired as a sort of gold braid pensioner among station masters.

Now it resembles a set from The Railway Children, forever Oakworth, and the railway children love it. “We’ve had quite a lot of educational visits from schools. They find it quite hard to believe,” said Keith.

They’ve even dusted down some old enamel advertising hoardings – Lifebuoy, and Sanitas (“destroys all germs”) and the fabled Fry’s Five Boys chocolate bar.

Remember the famous five? Desperation, pacification, expectation, acclamation, realisation.

For reasons which shortly they hope to address regular trains can’t yet stop there – but still there’s abundant reason to call. The next open days, with many in period costume from the 1920s, are on September 10 and 11.

Scruton was on the line from Northallerton to Hawes Junction. In 1922, Bradshaw timetables, the near-40 mile journey through stations like Jervaulx, Constable Burton and Askrigg consumed almost two hours.

Now called Garsdale, still one of Christendom’s greatest glories, Hawes Junction remains on the Settle and Carlisle line (and the in the wilder dreams of Wensleydale Railway Association members.)

Coincidence upon coincidence, the station marks the 140th anniversary of its opening this weekend.

Events include free talks in the Dales Countryside Museum at Hawes by Wensleydale Railway author Christine Hallas at 11 45am on Saturday and by former Dalesman editor David Joy at the same time the following day.

The Book of Bridges, original engineering drawings along the line, will be on display.

There’s a three-mile walk from Hawes cemetery for tea at Gayle chapel at 1 15pm on Saturday and, perhaps best of all, at 3 30pm on Sunday a programme of “Sunday School hymns” at the lovely little Mount Zion chapel – near the station, five miles west of Hawes and itself celebrating its 140th anniversary.

It’s followed by a “community tea” of renowned quality and biblical proportions. Some of us wouldn’t miss it.

Colin Theakston, the retired Northern Echo photographer whose funeral was held at Darlington crem last Friday, was justifiably described by former Echo editor Sir Harold Evans as a genius.

Colin covered the north of the region but had retired to Barnard Castle. Chiefly sustained by what seemed daily fish and chips – “every fish shop in the North-East,” said Yvonne, his widow – he even briefly ran a chippie, in Sedgefield, before returning to the photographic fray.

So much for today’s newspapers being tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings.

Back in the 70s and 80s, Colin also became greatly familiar on Seaburn sands, instructed whenever the sun shone to get himself to the foot of the Cat and Dog Steps where young ladies in bikinis were customarily disported.

These days such pix rarely seem to make papers like The Northern Echo, but back then the sun shone Cat and Dogs.

It may be for similarly 21st century reasons that a curious notice – “Bay One, front” – has appeared on the door of the village fire station at Reeth, in Swaledale. No matter that Reeth fire station only has one bay, or that there’s no vehicular access round the back, in these health and safety conscious days a fireman really can’t be too careful.