AT last! Reason has prevailed and a compromise has been reached.

Surely, as any parent whose children are squabbling over the train set knows, sharing is the best way forward, and so Locomotion No 1 is going to have two homes in the future, in Shildon and Darlington – as advocated in this column months ago.

Darlington has had the moral high ground, having looked after the engine when no one else cared about it for 163 years, but the National Railway Museum has had the legal ownership of it and so has the right to do what it likes with it.

And Shildon, a superb museum, will make a very fine job of displaying it.

And it will also be able to be seen in Darlington, where it is a monument as well as a museum piece, in its full context.

But, as the Echo has argued for years, Darlington needs to up its game and make the most of its railway heritage.

This was an unnecessary and unseemly row, and now it must be put behind us so that we can really ensure that 2025 is an all encompassing celebration that befits such a fought-over icon. Let’s hope we are back on track…