Jobs on the line: staff at Shildon station in former times
Shildon railway station has long had a bad press: this from The Northern Echo in 1875 was meant to be celebrating the Stockton and Darlington Railway’s 50th anniversary:
“Shildon station is a disgrace to Durham, to the Stockton and Darlington and to the railway system. The booking office is a shanty perched on top of a high bank entirely disconnected from the low-lying draughty sheds supposed to shelter passengers who have the ill luck to alight on its platforms. Perhaps this wretched apology for a station is continued in existence as a memento of the past.”
The author who exactly 100 years later supposed the station “dreary” was being positively generous by comparison. The journalist who thought it “conventional” was a) relatively ecstatic and b) blind.
As yesterday’s blog noted, the plan was to head there on the day’s first train from Darlington and to return on the last, a cheery chapter for a forthcoming book. It didn’t quite work out.
The mid-June temperature never exceeds 12 degrees. The station lights, presumably activated by degree of daylight, rarely go out. The station, though artistically acknowledging the town’s railway history, may be the least comfortable on the network, minimal and rudimentary seating perhaps designed for the punishment block on E-wing.
It may be little solace that that that dubious distinction could jointly be shared with hundreds of other lineside torture chambers, functional without the fun.
The signalman, perhaps one of those railway employees perennially on the streets to demand a better deal, has parked his Rolls Royce at the back of the box.
At 5pm precisely the music machine apparently intended to dissuade the desperate is automatically activated. Nothing more lugubrious, more likely to impel the trapped listener over the cliff edge, could ever be imagined.
Somewhere on the housing estate beyond, Mr Whippy intones Popeye the Sailor Man, positively life-affirming by comparison.
Engulfed by melancholy and assailed by aches, I catch the 18 33 out of it. The train has two conductors, two revenue protection officers – now high-viz identified as “travel safe officers” – and five passengers. Whoever might have thought that I’d be glad to see the back of Shildon?
*Back in time, yesterday’s blog returned to the One O’clock Show – that lunchtime staple of Tyne Tees Television between 1959-64 – and particularly to George Romaines, Shildon’s singing son, and to Ug and Og.
Ug and Og were cavemen, proper Neanderthals, played for laughs by Austin Steele – a Jarrow lad who’d trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood – and by Terry O’Neill who left for Australia and is credited with helping launch Olivia Newton-John.
Diligent searching, however, had failed to find a photograph of the prehistoric pairing.
It’s therefore the most remarkable coincidence that in the course of a day on Shildon station the only person I know is Simon Romaines, one of George’s three sons. “There’s a picture of Ug and Og among all my dad’s stuff ” he says and promises to dig it out.
Austin Steele died in 2005. Simon believes Terry O’Neill still to be alive, in which case he’d go back nearly as far as the cavemen.
*The plan between trains, accelerated by cancellations – “train crew member unavailable” – was to bag some fish and chips at Frydayz, on the nearby housing estate. Wednesdays, alas, appear not to be one of Frydayz days.
Instead I head to the little cafe at the top of Church Street, its heart worn so greatly on its sleeve that even the banquette seating is red-and-white striped.
There are framed Sunderland shirts, pictures of Sunderland greats, a notice atop the counter which reads “I support two teams: Sunderland and whoever is playing Newcastle.”
On the most mournful of June days, it’s starting to rain.”Eating in or outside?” asks the friendly assistant. It’s the day’s easiest question, and the pie’and chips are excellent.
*Yesterday’s blog also promised an update on the carry-on at Thornaby FC surroundig girls’ and women’s teams. Trevor Wing, a great and go-ahead club man latterly rejoicing in the title of chief executive, has now issued a statement.
Four of those five teams, it says, have never played nor trained at the Teesdale Park ground. Their arrangement with the senior club could have continued. “Financial constraints” led to the decision to end the relationship with the female sides.
Trevor, a veritable miracle worker in his 16 years with Thornaby, also says that he has been “mischaracterised”, though in truth he has been defamed. He was secretary of Middlesbrough Ladies, coached female sides and sat on the North Riding FA women’s committee.
Are those the actions of a sexist or a misogynist, as so widely and nonsensically has been claimed? The social media sewage spewers should be sentenced to a day on Shildon station.
Grass Routes 