There is much rejoicing that Hitachi is to bring train-building back to the North-East, the birthplace of the railways. Work will begin soon on the factory, at Newton Aycliffe, which will be beside the trackbed of the Stockton and DarlingtonRailway - only a few hundred yards from where the world's first passenger engine, Locomotion No 1, was first placed on the rails in September 1825.

BUT as well as this being the birthplace of the British railways, the Japanese company is opening up only a few miles from the birthplace of the Japanese railways.

Because just down the line, in Darlington, the rails were wrought for the first line into Tokyo.

Japan didn’t enter the railway age until the 1870s, largely because its Shogunate rulers had kept it in isolation for the previous 260 years. The new Meiji government was more open to western ideas and decided to allow British money and expertise to build its first stretch of line, 29km (18 miles) from the port of Yokohama into Tokyo.

About 300 British engineers and railwaymen went out in 1871, and British factories back home began constructing the first ten locomotives for the Japanese railways, and the first rails on which they were to run.

In the early 1870s, the largest rail producing plant in the North of England, and quite possibly in the whole country, was the Darlington Iron Company, at Albert Hill.

The Iron Company was formed in 1858 by one of Memories’ heroes, the eccentric William Barningham, whose own workforce admired him so much that they tried to kill him.

In 1872, when the first stretch of Japanese railway was made, Barningham’s Albert Hill works was producing 80,000 tons of iron a year, and was employing 2,000 men and boys – a huge concern in a town of fewer than 30,000 people.

On November 4, 1872, The Northern Echo carried a lengthy profile of the works.

The writer, probably the legendary editor WT Stead, was excited by the industrious scenes he found amid the puddling furnaces and steamhammers.

He wrote: “In the ruddy light of the furnace fires, a puddler, with rabble or paddle, is working the halfmolten metal – his features all a-glow with the radiating effulgence of the furnace; his naked back and breast wet with sweat-drops.

“A shingler, in his panoply of armour… is holding an incandescent mass of metal for the thrilling blow coming from the steam-impelled hammer…”

The article said that Barningham’s first overseas contract was placed by the Eastern Bengal Railway Company in 1859.

“The first order actually turned out was for India,”

said the Echo. “The first, and we believe the only, rails sent to Japan were from these works. The United States, New Zealand, Spain, Holland and Denmark have been large customers. The governments of Russia, Brazil and China have sent their orders hither.

“Many of our colonies have here found the metal for their iron roads. Scarcely a railway of any note in the United Kingdom but has been supplied from these works.”

Albert Hill may well have supplied the rails for Japan’s second line, between Osaka and Kobe, which opened in 1874 – the year the Albert Hill works started to struggle.

Barningham, though, managed to sell up just in time, but his fortune caused him much unhappiness. He died alone in 1882, leaving a bitterly contested will.

Albert Hill was soon cleared of all its connections with Barningham’s ironworks, but his ironwork in Japan is still doing a useful job. When their life as rails came to an end, they were lifted, cut to a new size and used to support platform roofs.

But beneath years of paint, the manufacturer’s name, Darlington Iron Co. can still be read.

  • With thanks to Charles McNab of Darlington Historical Society