Burning the (almost) midnight oil was the order of the night this week. Thank goodness the train was there to take the strain.

THE columnist's worst nightmare - there are several other reasons for insomnia - has woken up screaming. Two hours before this edition was to be compiled, the intended subject rang to cancel the arrangement. Since he was a giant pumpkin grower, the residual column may be something of a Cinderella.

ENGINE number 2005 was a Cinderella, too. Once anonymously familiar on the region's branch lines, she was the locomotive without a name - one of 70 class K1 steam engines built in Darlington around 1949.

Others became the Flying Scotsman or the Mallard or the Great Marquis. 2005 remained untitled - whatever her class, an engine which knew her place.

The rest is like something from Thomas the Tank Engine.

Saved from the scrapyard, 2005 is now owned by the Darlington-based North-East Locomotive Preservation Group and has for several years worked the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Next month she returns to the West Highland line to haul summer specials between Fort William and Mallaig - and, at last, is going up in the world.

"So many people, especially Americans, had asked why she hadn't a name that we decided to do something. Maybe we felt sorry for her," says Fred Ramshaw of the NELPG.

Though a final decision awaits, 2005 is likely to be ennobled as Lord of the Isles.

Fred, a Magpies man, has mixed feelings. "I proposed Newcastle United," he says. "Unfortunately I was rather heavily outvoted."

IF not pumpkin princes, perhaps we should write of Mick Pallister - encountered at the highly convivial president's night dinner of Peterlee Lions Club.

Mick has a couple of greenhouses at the bottom of his garden in Peterlee and four immaculately-tended allotments down in Horden.

He'd had that afternoon off, however - doing a spot of private gardening for someone in the Trimdons. Forever green, he is 85.

LAST week's column on the Old Forge on the Knoydart Peninsular - approached by sea, but the remotest pub on the British mainland - aroused much interest, not least because the caption writer became confused. The harbourside picture was of Inverie, not Mallaig.

Raye Wilkinson, who runs the Stable Lads Welfare Trust at Middleham, so greatly loves the rough bounds of Knoydart that he plans his 60th birthday party there in September - what's probably called pushing the boat out.

His first impressions, however, were rather less favourable.

Raye had stayed at the Big House on Knoydart, owned - like much of the wild land thereabouts, by former Darlington Football Club chairman Reg Brealey, for whom Raye did a bit of scouting.

Brealey was probably as popular in Inverie as he was in Darlington. "The first time I was in the Old Forge a lot of people were sitting muttering," he recalls. "Like the Hartlepool monkey, I think they thought I was a spy."

BACK on the rails, we looked at the weekend into the agelessly little laddish exhibition at Barnard Castle marking the closure of the Stainmore Railway.

What to the untrained eye might have seemed a small pile of rubble was labelled "bits of Belah Viaduct"; there were two bolts from the Tees Viaduct, a bracket from the 1861 canopy at Barnard Castle station, even - the note carefully made - "foot tread of steps of Barnard Castle West signal box."

Chiefly these treasures belong to David Heywood, a Barnard Castle shoe repairer who (John North, March 28) is also archivist of the Eden Valley Railway Trust, working towards the imminent restoration of services between Appleby and Warcop.

There were caps, gold braided and only 'umble, an LNER string tin, a lubrication of oil cans, signs from Waiting, Ladies' and General Rooms, tickets, tokens and tablets and something which appeared to be a bit of wood with a hole in it.

In truth, said David, it was a pattern for a crusher eccentric.

Biffed about a bit, there was also an LNER fire bucket, rescued from a trackside ditch on the Stainmore line. "We were just going along on this trolley when I spotted something," said the magnificent David. "It was a tremendous find."

There were also, of course, the dreaded (and dreadful) notices of Withdrawal of Passenger Services, the 1962 front page from the Penrith Observer lamenting the end of the line, the picture of the band at Kirkby Stephen station playing Will Ye No' Come Back Again and fearing that they already knew the answer.

The last train over Stainmore made its mournful crossing on Saturday January 20 1962, around 80 people on the dismal diesel multiple from Darlington to Penrith.

The day before, however, there'd been just one passenger and on the Thursday none whatsoever.

The Eden Valley Railway Trust, already 450 strong, hopes to run trains between Warcop and Appleby before the year's out and to be back again in Kirkby Stephen within the decade.

David Heywood is at Star Footwear Repairs, Star Yard, Barnard Castle, Co Durham DL12 8LY. Further information at www.evr.org.uk

AT the Stainmore exhibition we also bought for £2.50 a facsimile copy of the North Eastern Railway timetable of 1861 - 45 minutes, for example, from Darlington to Richmond via Croft, Moulton, Scorton and Catterick Bridge. Following much the same route, the number 34 bus now takes almost twice as long.

An appendix lists stations which changed names - Preston Junction became Eaglescliffe in 1878, Dalton Junction became Eryholme in 1901 and on July 1 1881 "Pensher" was renamed Penshaw.

Penshaw, outstanding for its classic monument, was on the line from Bishop Auckland to Sunderland. In the 1861 timetable it's also listed as "Pensher" - which, of course, is what the locals continue to call it.

Was there some good operating reason why Pensher suddenly became Penshaw? Or was it a pronounced victory for snobbery?

WHATEVER its rebellious reputation, the Cannon Street area of Middlesbrough was well served by the churches - we noted three weeks ago the upcoming centenary of St Columba's.

Ernie Reynolds, now familiarly in Wheatley Hill, recalls a childhood just around the corner from St Columba's - Methodists out the back, Spiritualists ("known to us as the Spuggies") up the street.

St Columba's parish priest was Fr Wicks - Father Wicked to irreverent youth - who disapproved of youngsters hanging around street corners and particularly of their games of pitch and toss.

One day, Ernie recalls, Fr Wicks challenged them to a game - if they won he'd not again interfere with their gambling, if he won they'd be in church the following Sunday. You could have bet on the outcome, of course: the good Father lost.

SO midnight - deadline midnight - approaches. Our old friend John Robinson, the martial arts maestro from Shildon, has been on about the 20 mile sponsored walk he plans, barefoot, in aid of cancer research but there's no time for any of that now. Perhaps there'll be more next week. Next week we go to the ball.