THE “Back on Track” campaign to bring the Hitachi factory to Newton Aycliffe is one of the most proud, and most successful, campaigns The Northern Echo has been involved with in recent decades.

It was launched just over a decade ago and it had two main aims: firstly, to persuade the Government that any new trains for British railways should be made in Britain and, secondly, that they should be made in a new factory in Newton Aycliffe.

That the factory was to be beside the trackbed of the Stockton & Darlington Railway and that it would return train-building to the region which before the Beeching Axe of the 1960s had many railway-manufacturing industries gave us the title for the campaign: Back on Track.

Hitachi had been the preferred bidder to build the £7.5bn next generation of InterCity trains since 2005, and it had selected Aycliffe, out of 33 possible locations across the country, as a favourite site.

But on taking power in 2010, the new Conservative-led coalition government reviewed all such massive projects. It even looked at buying trains “off the shelf” from a manufacturer in France.

So our campaign had to tell the Government of the economic benefit of building trains in this country, and especially of building them in Aycliffe.

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The campaign was led by the then MP for Sedgefield, Phil Wilson, and involved politicians of all political persuasions, Durham County Council, the unions, the Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, the property developer behind the Aycliffe site, and even celebrities like Duncan Bannatyne.

The Northern Echo: Hitachi Back on Track, September 21, 2010

A key moment in the campaign came in September 2010 when a report by the County Durham Development Company revealed that every £1 of Government money invested in the project would be turned into £48 in the local economy. This was one of the key messages that a Back on Track delegation took down to the Transport Secretary Philip Hammond in London, and he used the figure to persuade a sceptical Treasury of the potential benefits.

These were the days before “levelling up” although it fitted with Prime Minister David Cameron’s stated desire to “rebalance the economy”.

It took an age to get the project over the line – as with all train stories, there were plenty of delays – but on March 1, 2011, Mr Hammond announced in the Commons that Aycliffe would go ahead.

The Northern Echo: How The Northern Echo welcomed the Hitachi deal

He said: "I recognise the huge head of steam that there has been behind The Northern Echo's campaign."

An ecstatic Darlington MP, Jenny Chapman, tweeted from the chamber: "Philip Hammond – I could kiss you!!".

In the end it was a £4.5bn contract, but still it would create 730 skilled jobs, last for 30 years and be based beside the old trackbed in Aycliffe. Over the last decade, the factory has won more contracts, culminating in yesterday’s big £2bn announcement that it will be building the 225mph trains for the HS2 line.

Many people can claim credit for the success of bringing Hitachi to Aycliffe, and it is fair to say that a decade ago Mr Wilson, Geoff Hunton, of the developer, and the county council’s development companies played extremely significant roles.

But when asked in 2011 why, out of all the places in the world Aycliffe had been chosen for the new factory, Alistair Dormer, the managing director of Hitachi Rail Europe, said: "The main thing was the enthusiasm of the people. We have been received so warmly by them, so many have signed the petition and supported The Northern Echo's Back on Track campaign.”