IT’S not called Backtrack for nothing: we return, once again, to the railways.

Recent columns have recalled the former LNER class B17 locomotives, 25 of them named after football clubs – though “Newcastle United” lasted just three weeks, an even shorter lifespan than most incumbents of the manager’s office.

A little wistfully, for reasons which shortly will become clear, John Nicholls in Sedgefield now sends a set of four painted postcards depicting the B17s with North-East nameplates.

John bought them a long time ago. “I had this notion that the combination of locomotives and football would be of interest to my son, but I was wrong,” he says. “Football yes, trains no.”

Newcastle United, Middlesbrough and Sunderland are portrayed with bridge backgrounds, Boro’s not the iconic Transporter but the slightly less well-known Newport Bridge.

“Darlington” – 2852 in LNER days – is playing away, passing George Stephenson’s cottage at Wylam, in the Tyne Valley.

John’s happy for any North-East football fan to borrow the cards, but insists that they’re not for sale. “I’d rather keep them in case my grandson, aged two, is more enlightened than his dad.”

THE name of Newcastle United mysteriously having been seen off by the Essex Regiment, it was A1 class 60126 Sir Vincent Raven which hauled the Magpies back to Toon after the 1951 FA Cup final victory over Blackpool.

Raven, as also we noted, had been the North Eastern Railway’s chief mechanical engineer, though John Lavender supposes the A1s to have been “somewhat underpowered and a little overweight.”

Then again, aren’t we all?

John also sends an image of the blue plaque in Raven’s memory placed by Gateshead Council on the former NER offices in the town.

We’d also recalled that 60126 had officially been named by the Mayor of Darlington. It stirred memories for Ken Bowman, then a nine-year-old boy who dreamed of becoming an engine driver.

“Along with many others, I’d spend hours either at Bank Top station or Green Street engine sheds, train-spotting before being chased,” he says.

The naming took place on a short spur of line behind the railway offices next to Darlington station. It was August 3, 1950, the ceremony performed by Councillor G Dougill, watched by eight-year-old Peter Iremonger, Raven’s grandson.

The driver was simply identified as W Lyonette – himself a Darlington councillor. Mr H A Short, the NER manager, noted both that Raven had himself worked in Darlington and that he was “a son of the manse – one of many brilliant citizens who have had that distinction.”

The great man wasn’t a Magpie, though. He was from Norfolk, and thus much more likely to have been a Canary.

Ken and friends – “needless to say not invited” – watched proceedings from behind the railings on Park Lane until chased, several times, once again. He never became an engine driver, either.

POST-WAR newspapers were still a bit thin back in 1950, though the Echo on August 4, 1950, was able to report that Sunderland had signed Jack Hedley from Everton – the Geordie full back went on to make 295 appearances – that Blackpool star Stan Mortenson had denied he was signing for Inter Milan and that Willie Watson, another Sunderland footballer, had hit a century on his first appearance of the season for Yorkshire.

Yorkshire II – including Sutcliffe, Illingworth and Padgett – were playing Durham, for whom T K Jackson claimed a remarkable 9-105 in Yorkshire’s first innings. His previous best for the Minor Counties side had been 4-20.

Born in Barnard Caste in 1918 and educated at Barney School, Keith Jackson played club cricket for Bishop Auckland and became head brewer, later managing director, of Nimmo’s Brewery in Castle Eden.

“Lovely man. He’d turn up with a barrel of beer which we’d put in a cold bath until after the match,” recalls former Bishops player Keith Hopper, a man of slightly later Durham County vintage.

Jackson hit three centuries and took 65 wickets in 39 county appearances, and is also remembered because – against the touring West Indians at Sunderland earlier in 1950 – he became the only bowler in cricket history to bag the great Jeffrey Stollmeyer for a pair.

He married John Willie Nimmo’s daughter, lived in Castle Eden and died there in May, 1997.

FORMER Bishop of Durham Dr David Jenkins’s vow never again to make a train journey which involved changing at Birmingham New Street has been reported here before. A group of Darlington FC fans now knows what he meant.

Returning from the match at Stourbridge, they became stuck in the Birmingham station lift and, finally having convinced those in authority that they weren’t mucking about, were rescued after an hour by West Midlands fire brigade.

“Among the problems,” reports Richard Jones, a little coyly, “is that some of us had had a good drink.” The Quakers lost, an’ all.

WITH no greater direct line than the need to head there by train, the column heads tomorrow night to the wrestling at Shildon Civic Hall – featuring an American professional called Bram and others like Tokyo Joe and Goliath. (Goliath, memory suggests, is Goliath of Trimdon and not of Gath.) “A lot of children attend, they love the audience participation and interaction,” we’re told. The show starts at 7.30pm; tickets at the door.

THE Flying Scotsman may have even less to do with sport, unless named after Jim Baxter or someone, but David Thompson draws attention to another of the wondrously restored locomotive’s excursions into the North-East this very evening.

Headed for the North Yorkshire Moors Railway at Grosmont, the Flyer will leave York at 17.22, pass Thirsk at 17.51, Northallerton at 17.59, Eaglescliffe 18.24, Middlesbrough 18.37 and then – get this – spend an hour and ten minutes at Battersby, until 20.25, while presumably waiting for the night train from Whitby to clear in the opposite direction.

What formerly was Battersby Junction sounds like a train-spotter’s – and a photographer’s – paradise. What fun, what larks, what sport!