GEOFF Clay, of Bishop Auckland, asked: “Does anyone remember the mini-railway that was on a piece of grass land between Bishop Auckland and Tindale Crescent? It was opposite where the Aldi and Iceland supermarkets are now, and it is still a recreation ground now, only the railway has gone.”

This is Jane Armstrong Park at Woodhouse Close.

John Askwith remembered the railway. “It had an elevated track on concrete pedestals,” he said. “The grassed area around it was called 'the mini' when we played football there.”

Graham Redfearn sent in a badge from the Bishop Auckland model railwaymen who are believed to have run the mini-railway. “I can just remember it,” he said. “I understood that it had been badly vandalised and disappeared in the 1960s.”

Tom Hutchinson weighed in with the only known picture of the railway, which appears in his 2013 book, Tindale Crescent & Fylands Bridge.

And John Biggs in Etherley Grange offered this tantalising snippet: “Our next door neighbour, Herbert Dunne, owned a miniature railway that was originally in the Italianate gardens at Saltburn. He took it to Whorlton Lido, which he owned, and then I believe he took it from the lido to Woodhouse Close.”

Whorlton Lido, on the banks of the Tees, was one of the day-tripping highlights of the 20th Century. It opened in 1905, and the flat rocks of the riverbed created safe paddling places amid the cascades. In the early 1960s, it added a miniature railway to its natural attractions – could this have been the one which a few years later moved to Woodhouse Close?

When it moved from the lido, it was replaced by a larger miniature railway – with a 15 inch gauge – which remained operational until 1971. This railway then moved onto nearby private property where it is run by the Friends of Thorpe Light Railway.

Whorlton Lido itself closed in 2005, although there is still a pleasant public footpath along the riverside which goes past a wooden shed that is the last memory of the railway.