IT WAS surely coincidence, but Spectator thinks Wensleydale Railway can hardly have chosen a better time to dip its elbow into the hot water by reviving timetabled passenger trains between Leeming Bar and Leyburn.

As the great, the good and the ordinary £95 fare-paying passenger assembled at Leeming Bar station last Friday for the inaugural run, roadside notices announced that on the very same day, Yorkshire Water would be starting work on the upgrading of mains along part of the parallel A684 road in the area. The programme is expected to take six weeks.

True to form on this beleaguered highway to and from the Dales, Spectator on Monday found himself caught up in a traffic queue at temporary lights in Aiskew while a train scurried to and fro with enviable freedom carrying passengers who from that day were paying £8 return, with half-price concessions for children.

That may be on the high side for a 42-year-old train, but there must be some sort of message in that timely juxtaposition of road and rail.

Sign of the time's

THE march of the aberrant apostrophe has come a long way since it set out from the market stalls of fruit and veg merchants offering "cauli's" and "pea's" for sale.

While a handwritten shop sign is one thing, and forgivable, the sight of the misplaced mark on official notices makes it seem that its infiltration into the English language must be all but complete.

Driving into Barnard Castle recently, Spectator was shocked by AA signs directing motorists to an exhibition of wedding "dresse's".

The idea that plural words require an apostrophe before the final "s" is now so ubiquitous that it will surely soon become the norm. In the meantime, it must be causing a certain amount of embarrassment at the Bowes Museum - or should that be Bowe's? - where this splendid exhibition is on show.