Trains, cars and erotic blondes

And so it was last week when we published Ian Wright’s brilliant picture of No 4472 Flying Scotsman pulling out of what the photographer said was Darlington’s Bank Top station. He remembered taking it in 1964 as clearly as yesterday, he said, looking south towards a water tank on spindly legs…

But Alf Lease, a former railway fireman, rang to say how he and his two mates, both former steam engine drivers, couldn’t make out the picture. “We used to have one of those tanks in the shed so we’ve been trying to work out where the tank outside in the picture was,” he said. “We are all baffled.”

Our apologies to Alf – and all the others confused by the picture – because the picture was taken in another town.

Richard Barber, of the JW Armstrong Railway Trust, emails to put us back on track. “4472 is not leaving Darlington but Stockton on its way north with Pegler's Pullman excursion on the May 9, 1964,” he said.

Alan Pegler was the businessman/steam enthusiast who bought Flying Scotsman in January 1963 for £3,000 when British Rail was going to scrap it. Pegler saved it, had it expensively overhauled at Darlington and Doncaster, and then, by the end of 1970, was bankrupted by it.

However, the May 9, 1964 run was from Doncaster, where the overhaul had been completed, via Stockton and Sunderland to Edinburgh, from where the engine had a booking to run to Aberdeen.

Richard continues: “The locomotive is passing Primrose Hill signal box at the north end of Stockton station and in the far distance can be seen the roof of the old Stockton engine shed.”

Norman Hugill, in Stillington near York, takes up the story. “Primrose Hill signal box controlled the passenger lines that ran through the station but not the goods lines that ran round the back. In the mid-1960s, the box used to open for one shift only for parcels traffic, 0500 to 1300.

“How it got its name is anyone's guess as it backed onto Stockton gasworks – so imagine the smells. When coal or coke came by rail to the gasworks, it was also signalled by this box.

“I was signal box lad at the signal boxes on either side – Bishopton Lane and North Shore – in the mid-1960s.”

PATRICIA AUTY was another puzzled by the picture. She moved to Darlington from Huddersfield with her late husband, Gerald, when he was promoted in 1960 to work in Bank Top station’s south signal box.

“I went to visit him many times, but I never remember seeing that tank there at all,” she said.

When Gerald arrived, the south box was manually operated, and he stayed there until 1972 when it closed and he, and the other signalmen, were moved to the new, all-electric box at the north end of the station. There he remained until he retired in 1989 after a lifetime on the railways.

OH NO! Richard Barber has another factual inaccuracy from last week to put right. “In the other 1964 photo, it is not 4472’s boiler that has been stripped down in North Road works but a WD 2-8-0 similar to the attached photograph,” he says.

No 4472 Flying Scotsman – a 4-6-2 LNER Class A1/A3 – was the most famous loco of its day as it was the first steam engine to be officially recorded travelling at 100mph. It must, therefore, have been a very different beast to a War Department Austerity 2-8-0 loco, which was built in the last two years of the Second World War to haul heavy freight.

NOW to put an extremely cheeky Barry Chapman straight. Barry spent some time looking at last week’s Page in History from July 30, 1966. It was the back page preview of that day’s World Cup final. We had to reproduce the back page because there wasn’t a mention of the biggest match in the history of English football on the front page.

But it wasn’t all footie on the back page. Tucked away, bottom left, was something else…

“I've just finished the prize crossword on the 1966 back page,” says Barry. “Am I too late to send it in for the chance to win the £1 Premium Bond?”

Yes you are, Barry. Fifty years too late, to be precise.

BY the time of 1966 and all that, The Northern Echo’s cover price was a princely 4d. “I remember when I was a paperboy in the 1950s when the Echo cost one penny,” writes Colin Johnson. “My grandson couldn’t believe it when I showed him one of your facsimile front pages – how could you buy anything for just a penny, he asked?

“I remember the last house on my round got the Daily Worker, which was a very thin paper, but back then paper was still rationed and a paperlad’s bag was a lot lighter.”

When the Echo was first published in 1870, it called itself “the world’s first ha’penny daily” because it cost just ½d – a deliberate ploy by the proprietors who wanted to get the paper’s Liberal message into as many working class hands as possible.

DEBATE not only raged over last week’s trains, but also over the cars, particularly the one in Crook Market Place in March 1962 which readers were invited to identify. We were particularly intrigued by its rear doors which were hinged to open horizontally – one goes up and one goes down.

PESKY CAR: The scene in Crook in March 1962 starring a two-tone Hillman Minx estate

John Weighell of Neasham, Ian Anderson of Bedale, Ken Spellman of Bishop Auckland and Mark Cooper of Darlington were among those who identified it as a Hillman Minx estate, Mark suggesting it was a Series 3b.

We have form with Hillman Minx/Husky/Commer Cobs and all the varieties inbetween, so we were grateful for Richard Stone’s contribution. “I am reasonably certain, a Hillman Minx estate dating from around 1957-58,” he said. “It had much in common with both the Commer Cob and the Hillman Husky from the same era. Typically the two tone colour schemes of the Minx estate were grey/white, reddy pinkish/white, chalky green/white, faded blue/white – when photographed in black and white, they all came out as the same shade of grey.

HUSKY BROCHURE: The Hillman Minx, Husky and Commer Cob all looked very similar and came in a huge array of different shapes, as this brochure for the Husky shows. From the collection of John Biggs of Bishop Auckland

“The number of doors that the car in your photo has plus the position of the fuel filler cap and the style of the rear Lucas lights proves the identification. The clincher is the jaunty 'Minx' script running at 45 degrees on the lower right of the bottom half of the tailgate.”

Richard continues: “The much larger Co-op liveried van is either a Commer or a Morris. The car with the open door is a Ford 100e Popular. The utilitarian split screen lorry facing the camera on the opposite side of the street is, I think, yet another Commer.”

PROMO SHOT: A Hillman Husky estate in a 1962 picture released by Rootes Motors publicity department and saved in The Northern Echo's photo-library.  The caption reads: "The dual-purpose Hillman Husky". Presumably the Husky was good on water.

OVER the page is today’s Page in History from August 6, 1962, the day that the Echo reported the death of Marilyn Monroe at the age of 36.

Despite conspiracy theories that say otherwise, Monroe – battling depression, addiction, marriage break-up and career slide – took her own life with an overdose of barbituates.

In its obituary inside, the Echo lamented that her “reputation as a sex symbol obscured her real talent as an actress”, and it referred to the story of how her career began, posing naked for a calendar in order to pay off three months’ rent arrears and the photographs catapulting her to fame.

“For her calendar pose Marilyn received £18,” said the Echo, “and a reputation which may well have killed her.”