IT is a treasure trove of memories, a vivid reminder of the golden days of one of Darlington's greatest employers.

But the library, which is such a precious part of the town's railway heritage, was only saved from oblivion through pure luck.

Doug Hardy, 59, owns more than 50 pictures which chronicle the life and times of the North Road Locomotive Works, which closed in 1965.

He makes prints of the glass negatives, selling them to everyone from people with a passion for railway history to pubs which want atmospheric pictures to line their walls.

Mr Hardy's love of railways goes back to his childhood, after he was evacuated from London to Scarborough to avoid Hitler's bombing of the Capital.

He said: "It was the days of steam and I often travelled back to London by rail. Then, when I started working, I got a job with W H Smith working on station platforms."

Mr Hardy eventually left the stationers and set up the railway model shop in Parkgate, Darlington, which he called Folk Train and which he sold during the early 1980s.

During his time at the shop, Mr Hardy was approached with details of a remarkable find made during the demolition of offices at the former North Road railway works.

Mr Hardy, who lives off North Road, a short distance from Morrisons supermarket, which now occupies the site, said: "The contractors had discovered several hundred glass negatives, which they were going to smash up. When I saw them, I immediately realised their value to anyone interested in the North Road works."

After sifting through the negatives, he was left with about 50 from which he could work and now regularly sells prints at toy fairs and similar events.

The black and white pictures, taken by the plant's photographers throughout the first seven decades of the 20th Century, show some of the people who worked at the site, as well as numerous locomotives under construction.

Mr Hardy believes they are important because successive generations are losing their empathy with Darlington as a railway town, partly because of the way the works was closed despite a massive battle to save it.

In 1964, the British Railways Board announced a large number of redundancies, then introduced 12-hour shifts to handle the remaining work, before finally closing the works a year later.

Mr Hardy, who is secretary of Darlington Railway Preservation Society, believes the sense of betrayal felt by the workers meant that many men tried to forget the experience - and with it the town's railway heritage.

He said: "The way the closure was handled alienated a lot of men. The fact the works went on to 12-hour shifts left a lot of the men who had been made redundant fuming. There was a lot of hostility and bitterness.

"The older generation washed their hands of it. This is a hobby for me and some people with an interest in the steam age have tried to keep the interest going, but as they die out, it dies with them."

* Further information on Mr Hardy's collection is available in a leaflet at Darlington Museum and Railway Centre, off North Road. Anyone wishing to buy prints is asked to call Mr Hardy on (01325) 240433.