FIFTEEN years ago this week, The Northern Echo revealed how engineers were being recruited from as far away as New Zealand to rebuild Britain's beleaguered rail infrastructure.

A chronic shortage of skilled railway safety experts forced bosses to launch a worldwide recruitment campaign to tempt scores of engineers from the other side of the world to work in Britain – home of the railways.

North-East engineering company Amec, which has contracts with Network Rail, placed adverts in New Zealand's national papers, asking for up to 150 experienced railway staff.

Unions said an engineering skills shortage was leading to a backlog in maintenance and inspection work.

An inquest into the deaths of three men who in a fireball at a power plant recorded a verdict of accidental death.

The tragedy took place at Teesside Power Station at Wilton, near Redcar, east Cleveland. A fourth man suffered ten per cent burns in the explosion.

Two workers were attempting to adjust the voltage of a transformer and two were observing the unusual procedure, which would have enabled the men to close a circuit breaker to allow maintenance work elsewhere.

However, the transformer was still receiving massive amounts of energy from a steam turbine.

A huge surge – enough to power five million electric fires – flooded into the transformer. Oil caught fire and flames burst out of the machine engulfing the men.

Elsewhere in the region, Castle Eden Walkway, at Thorpe Thewles, near Stockton, trebled in size, and thousands of fish were stocked in a North-East lake.

The fish had previously been removed from Albert Park lake in 2001 and put in Hemlington Lake, in Middlesbrough. This allowed Albert Park lake to be drained so that silt could be removed and extensive work to renovate the lake edges could be carried out.

The long-awaited re-stocking of Albert Park lake was completed after it underwent regeneration, financed by a £5,000 grant by the Environment Agency.

Several thousand carp and roach were introduced to their new home.