SITTING in the editor's chair is all very well.

But getting out of it to venture around the region is the best part of the job. You never know whom you might meet.

Last week's engagements included a visit to the place where I was born to speak to the Saltburn and District Retired Men's Forum.

The forum's chairman, a friendly, weather-beaten chap called Reg Blacklock, met me at the Methodist Hall in Milton Street. Neither he nor I realised the part he'd played in my childhood.

We chatted about the weather forecast for the Bank Holiday, and it emerged that Reg had a particular reason for praying for sunshine - he is chairman of the Saltburn Miniature Railway Association which relies on day-trippers.

I actually felt my heart leap when he told me, because riding on that rackety railway, from the old boating lake to the Italian Gardens, is one of my fondest boyhood memories.

It may all seem rather simple in these days of exotic holidays and computer games, but catching the double-decker from South Bank to the coast was our greatest adventure.

We'd potter about on the beach, then jump aboard the little green train. Rattling along the track, passing through a scary black tunnel and under the long since demolished Ha'penny Bridge, the scent of wild garlic filled the air. At the end of the line was "the magic stream". My mum would secretly throw coins - thre'penny bits, sixpences and the occasional shilling - into our fishing nets so my brothers and I were convinced there was magic at work.

Reg Blacklock, 73 this year, has spent more than half a century driving the Prince Charles engine, which arrived at Saltburn in 1953, six years after the railway was established by Herbert Dunn, of Bishop Auckland.

Railways have always been Reg's passion. "I've just always loved railways - I can't help it," said Reg, who taught history at Bydales School in nearby Marske.

"I used to come to Saltburn to help out in the 1950s. They taught me to drive Prince Charles and I've been driving it ever since."

I decided there and then where I'd be spending today's Bank Holiday Monday. I'll be rattling along behind evergreen Prince Charles on the way to the magic stream.

A COUPLE of months back, I ventured to Hartlepool to be a guest of the football club for the visit of Northampton.

It was a pleasant surprise to find myself sitting beside the club's Honorary Life President, Lord Tom Burlison.

When I was a young reporter in the 1980s, Tom's name was underlined in my contacts book as the ever-helpful regional secretary of the GMB union. He went on to become a life peer in 1997.

Football, though, was his passion. He played more than 150 games for Hartlepool before switching to Darlington for his last season.

As we watched Hartlepool going down to Northampton at the end of February, Tom still had a sparkle in his eye as he recalled how he scored his best-ever goal in his final game, playing for Darlington against Aldershot in 1965. "I didn't score many but that was a good 'un," he smiled.