THE gates closed for the final time and grown men wept - it was the end of a town's love affair with the railways that had spanned more than 150 years.

Shildon Wagon Works was the Jewel in the Crown of British Rail. As one of the largest railway wagon-building and repair centres in Europe, it was a thriving enterprise that had provided work for generations of Shildon's people.

At its peak, it had an annual turnover of £24m and provided work for 2,600 people repairing and modifying 510 wagons a week - 25,000 a year.

The huge facility occupied 58 acres and had 20 miles of track.

The assembly line method meant a locomotive started at one end of the works and travelled by track through the different departments and came out at the other end ready for action.

It was with a sense of pride that young boys followed in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers, taking on an apprenticeship knowing that one day their sons, too, would carry on the tradition.

Little did they know privatisation of the railways was around the corner and the end of an era was nigh.

Alan Cole, 56, started work there when he was 16 as an apprentice fitter. His father, Cecil, also worked there and his grandfathers before that.

He said: "They used to take on about 80 apprentices a year and when I first started thousands worked there.

"It was like a community on its own. Everybody knew each other. Many of the lads I worked with I had been around all my life. We went to school together and then went on to work together.

"We knew that eventually they would close down some of the works but none of us ever thought they would close the lot and at the time everybody was devastated."

The closure of the Shildon works was a tortuous affair.

British Rail blamed over- capacity in its engineering operation. Nationally, BR's production facilities were running at a loss - only Shildon managed to turn a profit. But with one eye on privatisation, BR management wanted to divest the group of its costly manufacturing arm altogether.

When it came, the decision was doubly cruel to the North-East workforce.

BR management vacillated over the closure and the will-it won't-it drama meant the workforce felt badly let down.

The closure announcement came just months after BR had pledged Shildon's future would be secure on condition the works shed 700 jobs. BR dropped the bombshell the same day as councillors and union officials met to plan celebrations for the works' 150th anniversary.

A fortnight earlier, the site had beaten off foreign competition to win a multi-million pound order from the Congo.

But BR wouldn't be swayed. Shildon would close as part of a package that also involved the loss of works at Horwich, near Bolton, and Temple Milles, in east London. So June 29, 1984, saw the end of a dream that started in the early 1800s when rail pioneer Timothy Hackworth came to town.

Hackworth put Shildon on the railway engineering map, building the Royal George in 1827 and the Sans Pareil. The Shildon works capitalised on that dream.

The town's links with the industry are about to be revived in the shape of the £10m Locomotion: National Railway Museum. It is hoped that pride will be restored in its history but many will never forget "Shildon Shops".

Mr Cole, who worked as a shop steward for 14 years until the closure, said: "I hope that the railway museum works. It is certainly a fitting place to have a museum like this.''

Tom Straughair, who worked in the stores part of the works, stayed there until the end of December. His three sons also worked there.

He said: "Shildon works meant everything to the town, absolutely everything. They didn't just work there they used to socialise together and everything. It was the community, and the day it closed Shildon died."