STAN CHAPE told me this week about a useful signalling system devised in the 1940s when he worked on the late Jack Iceton's farm, at East Corn Park, in Baldersdale.

There was no telephone on the property, so they needed some other way to find out when a load of coal was being delivered to Cotherstone station.

It may seem strange to today's young folk, who can flash instant text messages and emails around the world, but back then they were glad to make use of old fashioned whistle power.

"The train driver blew his loud steam whistle as he was getting near," said Mr Chape.

"As soon as we heard it, we hitched a cart onto Beauty, a big shire horse, and headed for the station. It saved us from wasting time going there to see if the coal had arrived. We never knew which day it would come."

Once there, he and Jack would shovel the fuel into hundredweight loads and deliver it round the village, often dumping it loose in the back lanes outside customers' homes.

For the rest of the week, depending on the season, they worked long hours on milking, mucking out, lambing, shearing, haymaking, threshing and all the many other tasks around the farm. It was virtually dawn to dusk all the way.

A change came every fourth Friday, when young Master Chape had to take the horse to the blacksmith at Eggleston to get its shoes replaced. This was necessary as it spent so much time on roads.

Mr Chape had lived in Sunderland until then, but he has been in Teesdale ever since. Before retiring, he tackled a variety of jobs, including a spell as a postman with a long round in Baldersdale.

"That first farm job was really hard, as I was only a little lad and the hours were so long," he recalled.

"But looking back on it, I can say that working for Jack Iceton was the making of me."

ANOTHER tale about the railway is told by Hazel Cleasby, in a Craft Works booklet that accompanies tapestries made by community groups for an exhibition in Shildon.

She recalls that her great great-grandfather, Ralph Trotter, was stationmaster at Romaldkirk. His grandson Thomas held the same post there in 1881, and in turn his son, Ephraim, became a guard on the line to Middleton.

Ms Cleasby said: "Ephraim, who was blessed with a bulbous nose, had an accident and fell from the train to the line.

"Unfortunately, he fell face down onto hot cinders. He had an even more bulbous and pockmarked nose after that. He did, however, have a sense of humour and saw the funny side of his misfortune."

MORE than 50 men and women enjoyed excellent food with exotic flavours and unusual names when they went on a night out organised by Joyce Jackson, of Middleton-in-Teesdale.

She is well known for her efforts to help the village of Kilimatinde, in Tanzania, East Africa, so the meal was based on recipes from that area.

"I found it delicious and all the others seemed impressed as well," said Mrs Jackson.

But where can a group from the upper dale find cooks able to rustle up dishes such as sosaties, babotie, potgie, peri-peri and other delicacies?

The answer lies at Darlington College, where Rebecca Dougall, a professional tutor, showed seven keen catering students how to do it.

She searched the internet for suitable recipes, then got in all the ingredients and kept an eye on the way each pot was progressing.

Ms Dougall, who has been a chef in high-priced hotels, also got her team to explain to the diners what was in each dish.

"We all the enjoyed the whole experience," she told me.

In English, the ingredients might have been called diced beef, minced beef, lamb, chicken and ham, but the way they were mixed in with spices, sweet potatoes and other vegetables gave them an African tang.

Mrs Jackson reckons they were a first-class advertisement for the catering department and the work the students will go on to do in hotels and restaurants around the district.

The outing made her a profit of £396, which will go towards improving life even more in Kilimatinde.

The last venture to which she and her Teesdale friends contributed, a blood bank, is now up and running in a hospital there.

A number of people have shown an interest in visiting the village with her next summer.

FOLLOWING a piece here a some weeks ago about Joanna Ashwell's volume of haiku, which is a three-line form of Japanese poetry, a reader sent me two of his own efforts.

One is: This global warming/A hot topic/Makes me shiver.

The second is: Losing lots of weight/Extremely easy/Simply eat less.

Ms Ashwell told me they are not really haiku, but might qualify as senryu, a comic style of three-line Japanese poetry.

"But they're really not very good," she added.

"Some people think haiku must be easy to write as it is so short. But it isn't, and I know as I've been studying it for years. It has deep meaning."

So it seems our hopeful new bard would be well advised not to give up his day job.