RECENT Memories have been looking at the mysteries of the Humber Pullman – the grand limousine that was the mayor of Darlington’s official car and which was the vehicle of choice for Durham police in the late 1950s.

John Biggs, one of our regular posse of car-spotters, throws out two challenges. First, to Memories readers. Who can identify this 1960s pop song, he asks:

Oh, you railway station!
Oh, you Pullman train!
Here's my reservation
For my destination,
Far beyond the western plain.
To see my home in Pasadena,
Where the grass is greener
Where honey bees sing melodies
And orange trees scent the breeze…

A clue, he says, is that “the singer with this jazz-type group used a megaphone”. We’ll give you the answer next week.

His second challenge is to Memories itself. “You might like to investigate the name Pullman,” he says. “It was applied originally to railway carriages.”

In fact, it was originally applied to George Mortimer Pullman, an American entrepreneur whose company, the Pullman Car Company, had the first exclusive rights to run restaurant cars and sleeping cars on US trains.

The Pullman carriages in a train were luxurious, and more expensive than standard class.

In 1873, Pullman brought the Pullman service to Britain, starting on the Midland Railway, spreading across the network, and even being applied to executive motor cars.

MARIAN LEWIS in Hutton Magna, near Richmond, has recently unearthed some copies of the Barnard Castle and Upper Teesdale Parish Magazine from the summer of 1909. The magazine served all of Teesdale, from St Mary’s Church in Barney down to Whorlton and up through Eggleston to Middleton-in-Teesdale and beyond to the Church of St James and St Jude at Forest and Frith. The articles, if we’re honest, are a little earnest, but the adverts are magnificent. Who would not want to go for a trim at the Barnard Castle Toilet club, or, for that extra special occasion, would you not come into Darlington to visit the Ornamental Hair Specialist in Skinnergate?

IN Memories 270, we were all excited in Escomb, looking at the Lingford Gardiner & Company horse trough at the top of the village.

Tom Robson, 91 this month, of Bishop Auckland got in touch.

“We lived at the bottom of Escomb bank where my mother’s mother kept the post office,” he said, “and walked every morning up the bank to school. At the same time, Jack Scales from Vicarage Farm, would be leading his sand and gravel cart up the bank, pulled by two horses.”

The sand and gravel was dug out of the River Wear and was used for house and road building in the Bishop area. The metal trough at the top of the bank, which now has plants and bulbs growing out of it, was for the horses to refresh themselves.

The Northern Echo: REFRESHING: The Lingford, Gardiner horse trough at Escomb
TROUGH OF MEMORIES: The Lingford, Gardiner horse trough, Escomb

“One morning, the lead horse collapsed and died near the trough,” said Tom. “It was still there when we came home for lunch, and with our morbid curiosity, we stood and stared at it.”

It is funny the things that stick in the memory. It’s also funny how things don’t really change.

“The Co-operative store came round once a week with a covered wagon pulled by two magnificent shire horses,” he said. “They stopped outside our house to deliver the things mother had ordered the week before – and we used to get a stone of flour because she did her own baking.”

It is a quaint memory of times past – only today, of course, our roads are jampacked with supermarket vans clicking and dropping. It is impossible to go anywhere without encountering a Tesco vehicle just as back then the lanes must have been full of Co-op wagons.

ANOTHER Lingford Gardiner note from Barbara Laurie in Bishop. The locomotive firm had its headquarters in Railway Street, accessed by a private siding which ran from Bishop Auckland station. You can still see its cutting next to the Asda supermarket; in fact, you can still stand on the footbridge which went over the Lingford Gardiner line.

“During the Second World War, there was an air-raid shelter underneath the footbridge for the residents of South View,” says Barbara, “and it was always known as monkey bridge – I have no idea why.”

Many thanks to everyone who has been in touch. Any comments on today’s articles will also be very welcome – especially if you can explain why there was a monkey bridge in the middle of Bishop Auckland.