WHATEVER the weather, today the festival at Darlington's North Road Railway Museum really gets going.

It is on this weekend to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The S&DR has many claims to fame - principally that it was the world's first public steam-powered passenger railway - and not all of them are historically accurate. However, it did change the world. It proved steampower and engineering could work on an industrial scale, and it presaged the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

And it changed the North-East. It invented Middlesbrough and Saltburn, and it created the Darlington and the Shildon that we know today. It probably created many readers of The Northern Echo because 175 years ago thousands of forefathers were attracted to the railway and its ancillary industries looking for work.

Although many people are still disappointed - and out of pocket - from the collapse of August's Cavalcade of Steam, it would have been embarrassing and unthinkable if Darlington had not laid on some form of festivity to commemorate this notable anniversary.

So this weekend's festival is a little last minute. However, that it does exist at all is testimony to the hard work of the organisers.

Now all it needs is some visitors. It needs you. It is reasonably priced at £2.50 a day and it should keep you, and the children, happily occupied for a couple of hours.

It needs to be a success to convince those in authority - both the Lottery's bankers and local councillors - that the people of South Durham are interested in what made their area and what their area gave to the world. It needs to be a success so that in the future Darlington can build on it and once again become an international railway centre with all the tourist and economic benefit that would bring.

So please go along. And enjoy yourselves. Whatever the weather.