THAT was the Night Mail crossing the border, It once brought the cheque and the postal order...

One hundred and sixty-six years of history came to an end last Friday night when the last Travelling Post Office (TPO) rattled through Darlington station on its final journey from Newcastle to London.

Inside swayed the last of the travelling sorters - the elite of mailmen - each sorting about 1,200 letters an hour. Among them was Dave Griffiths, who may live in Bishops Stortford and may speak with a broad Estuary accent, but is a member of Durham County Cricket Club and vice-president of Whitley Bay and Evenwood football clubs. "I've been leading a double life for 30 years," he admits.

The first TPO was a converted horsebox, which travelled on January 20, 1838, on the Grand Junction Railway from Birmingham to Warrington. One sorter was sorting away inside while a guard was on the roof protecting him.

The following year, nets were invented that snatched mailbags suspended trackside as the train passed by, removing the need to stop. The heyday of the TPO was just before the First World War when 139 trains criss-crossed the country every night.

WH Auden captured the rhythm of the rails in his 1935 poem Night Mail which, accompanied by Benjamin Britten's music, featured in a GPO propaganda film. In 1963, the Great Train Robbers captured £2m of the TPO's contents in their crime.

There was something hugely romantic about the idea of the TPO charging through the countryside while everyone slept, vast plumes of smoke marking its progress as it disappeared into the darkness. Braced inside against the rock and roll of the carriages were anonymous men - hopefully in uniform with a cap - sorting into a wall of wooden pigeonholes the most intimate of mail, which would change lives and break hearts over the coming dawn's breakfast tables.

"We made daily dispatches at Darlington fractionally before 3am, dropping off the mail for Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Crook, Consett..." says Dave. "At that time in the morning, Darlington station was an absolute hive of activity. You wouldn't believe it really."

Already it sounds like history. It sounds like the solution to a Victorian problem, when the steam trains moved sluggishly, creating a night-time of dead-time for the Royal Mail. Today, mail flies or drives to its destination where whizzy machines can sort 30,000 letters an hour. No longer, says the Post Office, is there the need for the Daves of this world to sleep through the day to sort through the night.

Dave's week began on a Monday in a passenger train to Newcastle. He'd then sort his way "up" to London overnight into Tuesday, and then sort his way "down" to Newcastle to arrive early on Wednesday.

That's when his double life began, for on Wednesday afternoon the football team that he formed - North-East TPO FC - played against teams in the North-East, 118 matches in 12 years.

But now no more. Last Friday the last 18 TPOs reached their last destinations. "It'll take a bit of readjusting," says Dave, "but I finished last Saturday morning and on the Monday me missus was off to Lanzarote for eight days with friends from work."

He promises to return to the North-East in the summer, to take in the cricket at Chester-le-Street and visit old friends.

And so a little piece of British history fades out. Can the clickety-clacks captivate another generation of young poets in the classroom if the TPOs no longer charge through the night?In the farm she passed now no one wakes

And the jug in the bedroom no longer shakes.