GARSDALE railway station has marked its 140th birthday. To have missed the party would have been akin to missing the No 1 son’s. (OK, OK, son, but you’ve never been 140.)

The station’s on the Settle and Carlisle line, west of Hawes: as previously we have observed, it is among the wonders of the world.

A day of celebration begins with a talk at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes by esteemed former Dalesman editor David Joy, whose 42 books have all been about the dales or the railways and whose 43rd will embrace both.

Like the talk, it’s called Rails in the Dales. “If you’ve come here thinking it’s about fences, you’re in the wrong place,” he says.

He’s 74, stands 6ft 6in in his best braces, might successfully have auditioned for the Big Friendly Giant film had not Mark Rylance got there first.

David’s also having a bit of bother with the computerised projector system. “It was never like this with magic lanterns,” he grumbles, affably.

His knowledge is immense – if not Joy to the world, as the hymnist supposed, then rich delight to many who suppose themselves to be in God’s own county.

Some of his anecdotes, however, may be supposed a little apocryphal. There’s the familiar story about the stranger alighting at Dent station, England’s highest, and inquiring the way to the village.

“About fower miles ower’t hill,” says the querulous old station master and is at once asked why it’s not nearer the village.

“’appen,” says the station master, “they wanted it nearer the railway line.”

David also tells the one, from the days when Leyburn’s station master was also the local coal dealer, about a telephone call from a posh oftcumden.

“I say my good fellow, could you deliver straightway, s’il vous plait?” she demands.

“Certainly modom,” says the station master, “would you like it a la cart or cul de sack?”

A bit of a carbon fossil? “Certainly not,” says Ruth Annison, who has organised the Garsdale glee club. “The station master’s daughter’s in the audience today. It’s true.”

BARELY half a mile from the sceptred station, the Moorcock was the scene on December 27, 1910 – just three days after the tragedy – of the inquest into the Wreck of the Scotch Express, human error by a Garsdale signalman.

Framed on the pub wall, a poem tells the sorry story: “’Twas midnight at St Pancras, and the Scotchman due away...”

Also on the wall are notices promoting the centenary, on September 4, of the Moorcock Show. Clearly it is to be a big occasion: “Special guest, Peppa Pig.”

THE Moorcock’s in North Yorkshire, and does a canny Yorkshire pudding. The station’s in Cumbria, its former turntable stockaded so that engines on the branch up from Northallerton might face the future without being blown back into the past.

It’s that sort of day again, the blustery platforms bravely, baby buntinged. A lone traveller sits in the immaculate waiting room with his Thermos, his cheese and pickle and his optimism. Goodness know what hour, or what day, the next train is.

Not for the first time we seek shelter in the gloriously timeless Hawes Junction Methodist chapel, known as Mount Zion, between pub and station and beneath the impressive shadow of Dandrymire viaduct.

A German aircraft, it’s recalled, dropped its load of bombs on Dandrymire during the last war, missing the viaduct by several hundred yards and Newcastle, for which it was aiming, by about 70 miles.

The chapel, also marking its 140th anniversary, is holding a “Sunday School hymns” service followed by what self-effacingly is termed a “community tea.” Hawes Junction teas are the food of legend and of love, the great spread at the front coyly covered by about three dozen tea towels.

Magic porridge pot, more provender keeps arriving. “I don’t believe the loaves and fishes was a miracle at all,” says the lady of this house. “Jesus just had a load of North Yorkshire farmers’ wives hiding behind a hill.”

It begins with All Things Bright and Beautiful. “Maybe it’s not very bright today, but it’ll still beautiful,” says Andy Souter, the leader, looking through the window towards Dandrymire.

Andy, who runs a bakery in Leyburn, also recalls when the remote chapel had 70 Sunday School children. “Every Good Friday they’d get a tea and a free orange,” he says. “It was the highlight of the year.”

The hymn book’s venerable, preface by John Wesley. Other former favourites include Follow, Follow, I Will Follow Jesus – latterly appropriated by followers of Glasgow Rangers FC – Zaccheus Was a Very Little Man (and a very little man was he) and Climb Climb Up Sunshine Mountain.

Before the treasures of the community tea chest, we close with Tell Me the Old, Old Story. Someone’s been reading my script.

METHODISTS make the best teas; they’ve had more practice. Perhaps believing that they provided sustenance only for the soul, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches were seldom built with kitchens or (shall we say) other facilities.

Many have added them. At St Michael and All Angels in Middleton Tyas, the official opening of new kitchen and toilet was marked with a concert by the Royal Signals (Northern) Band, volunteers based in Darlington.

“It’s the first time we’ve played in honour of a toilet,” said Captain Tom Milford, the musical director.

Once the regular army had 69 bands. Following a Strategic Defence Review – “cuts,” translated Captain Tom – there are now but 23. The bands play on: they fielded the Reserves.

The guys were brilliant, likewise the tea. On a lovely Sunday afternoon they played Sunny and Summer Time and a saxy little number called Piddly Widdle which, though military discipline forbade further comment, was probably the most appropriate of all.

RECENT columns have mourned the closure of yet more Methodist chapels (and will again ere long.) Now, we hear, the world’s oldest in continuous use is finally giving up the ghost.

It’s at Newbiggin-in-Teesdale, a lovely little place built by the lead miners for £60 15s 3d and several times visited by John Wesley himself. “I found the people deeply attentive but not, I think, deeply affected,” he once wrote.

Erected in 1759, the chapel still houses the original pulpit, the original black-bright stove – like one of Richard Trevithick’s earlier steam engines the columns irreverently observed – and a colony of long-eared bats which probably aren’t original at all.

The final service will be May 24, 2017, Wesley Day, before that the joyous Christmas carol service (and mince pie fest) on the morning of Tuesday, December 13. It will also be open for the heritage weekend of September 10 and 11.

June Luckhurst, steward and stalwart, looks heavenward. “It’s the high-ups who say it can’t continue,” she says. “It’s very, very sad.”

A FINAL ecclesiastical note. Entitled “Brexit and Bible prophecy”, a talk in Durham last Saturday was based on the text: “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we are escaped.” David Cameron failed to foresee it, the polls failed to foresee it, even the Daily Mail failed to foresee it – but Psalm 124 knew the outcome all along.