Train times. (2020 - 2025)

Saturday 27th September 2025 marked 200 years since the launch of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the railway that gave birth to the modern world. Everything we've ever known about train travel - station waiting, commuting, timetables, tickets, sharing carriages with strangers, exploring new places - all originated in the experiments of 1825. This year, communities across the UK have come together to celebrate the remarkable achievement of the railways. I made it my mission to be something of a soundtrack to this movement, injecting a bit of creativity in the songs and stories I've picked up along the way.

"My eyes had never seen a sight so wonderful / A mass of moving colour, of goods and people / How could I forget the sight of so many moving by / Sister, I wish you'd been there" (from the song My Dear Sister, photo taken in Shildon, as replica Locomotion No. 1 re-enacts its famous journey 200 years on)

As you may know, this all began sometime ago when I decided to dedicated a big chunk of my art practice to capturing stories of rail travel from past and present, through a series of community art projects, collaborations with poets, transforming a train carriage into a 'Story Train', and commissioning new pieces of work, including a modern adaption of The Railway Children for primary school children along the line.

This blog post reflects back on the highlights.

It all began in Shildon...

...that is both the railway (where Locomotion No. 1 began it's famous journey) and my creative adventures. In late 2020, Citizen Songwriters - the social enterprise I run - was commissioned by Greenfield Arts to write a song to celebrate Shildon. Meeting on an online video call during those tricky Lockdown days, we pulled together participants from Weardale (where the S&DR line began) all the way to Teesside, where the line reached. 'Shildon Town' was the result, a song that helped celebrate local pride in Shildon, a song which has since gone onto be sung by various choirs and has been recorded on an EP of songs titled 'Cradle of the Railways'.

Shams, Darlington resident, joined the Shildon songwriting project

The following year, Citizen Songwriters spent the spring meeting folks at the Shildon Railway Institute (the Stute) to create a set of songs to bring alive stories from Shildon, in a project called 'Life along the Line'. This resulted in workshops run by Alexandra Summerson, my colleague at Citizen Songwriters, and myself at the Stute as well as guided walks by the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, folks who would become companions over the next four years as we shared mutual interest in the heritage of the S&DR. This first phase of 'Life along the Line' concluded with a performance of songs at Locomotion Museum to primary school children and their parents.

Somewhere along the journey we met the fabulous Rosie Bradford who had recently begun a new community choir, The Shildon Railway Institute Singers. Rosie is a singer, musician, music teacher, and a choir conductor who has a natural flare for bringing people together and encouraging everyone to have a go singing, whatever their experience. Citizen Songwriters collaborated with Rosie to record five songs, including Shildon Town, with the choir. On a stormy night in the winter of 2022, we brought Graham Kay from Xtrasonic Media into Shildon Railway Institute to set up recording gear to record the choir, along with visiting local musicians.

Shildon Railway Institute Singers recording their parts for 'Shildon Town'

Meanwhile in the Durham Dales

On a winters day late November 2022, a former LNER High Speed Train Buffet Car is shunted up the Durham Dales, into Platform 1 at Stanhope Station to begin a new life as a storytelling carriage. The coach (no. 40701) had recently finished its 43 year career carrying passengers all around the UK and had been kindly donated to Citizen Songwriters by Porterbrook, the rail leasing company. The coach became 'The Story Train' and opened to the public in December 2022 to begin telling stories of train travel. It was first put to use as part of Weardale Railway's Christmas season, with storytellers and actors performing a locally written story all about the railway saving Christmas for the residents of Stanhope!

Over the next three years, the Story Train would see over 11,000 visitors from across the country and beyond to come and engage in storytelling through music, theatre, puppets, arts and crafts. A popular place for school visits, the Story Train engaged frequently with the three primary schools of Stanhope Barrington, Frosterley and Wolsingham Primary School. The project culminated in an exhibition called 'A Mile In My Seat' in September 2025, showcasing the stories of individuals in the North East who all have a connection to the railway, with a focus on how communities are celebrating the 200 year anniversary of the railways. I'm deeply indebted to Becky and Miriam Ashton who spent many hours looking after 'Billy', as the coach would become known.

Children from Frosterley Primary School enjoy their visit to The Story Train

All aboard the Poetry Train.

In 2023, the railway mania cranked up a few notches, through a wonderful 3 year long project with the Bishop Line Community Rail Partnership (BLCRP), drawing in funding from Northern, Cross Country, and the Community Rail Network. Felicity Machnicki, the BLCRP officer and I devised a programme called 'Storylines' which would allow four North East poets, filmmakers, a playwright and myself as a songwriter to spend time travelling along the Bishop Line to Darlington and beyond to Saltburn to gather stories from passengers today. The line is significant since it follows much of the original trackbed of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The aim of the project was to bring stories of the past into conversation with passengers who travel today, through creating a series of new works: films, songs, poems and a modern adaption of The Railway Children.

Myself, Felicity Machnicki, Lizzie Lovejoy, Carmen Marcus, Becci Sharrock

So, in April 2023, the artists set off on a storytelling mission to gather stories, which went on to capture the interest of BBC Tees and the Northern Echo as a gradual awareness of the 2025 bicentenary year was emerging. These were very creative months of rail travel, deep conversations, digging into archives, uncovering new discoveries and then sharing them through five fabulous films created by Lonely Tower as well as songs and poems shared at a showcase event at The Forum, Darlington, on 27 September 2023.

The project also involved facilitating workshops and group trips, including a very memorable trip taking people seeking sanctuary - many of whom had never been on a train in the UK - from Stockton to Stanhope to visit The Story Train. A good dose of friendly train conversations, introducing 'Train Bingo' (a great activity for learning English) and songs on The Story Train, fused with the warm welcome of the Weardale Railway volunteers, had the group singing all the way back to Stockton!

The following year was dedicated to recording an album of songs fused with some of the poems from the residencies. Blank Studios in Newcastle became the creative space where the artists would meet, collaborate and create a few new surprise tracks for the album, all with the support of sound engineer and producer John Martindale. Lizzie Lovejoy, one of the poets, was commissioned to create the artwork for the album drawing on their own artistic creations from 'Trailways', Lizzie's own community-engaged project with the Bishop Line.

'Passengers & Pioneers' was born and received very favourable reviews from the folk scene, including airplay for 'My Dear Sister' and 'The Poetry Train' by Rowan McCabe on BBC Radio 2's Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe. To indulge in just one: “An absolute gem of an album that combines original songs and poems with letters from people long gone, and even newspaper articles, to produce a work spanning those centuries and looking at how rail has affected people across time and social classes. It captures a zeitgeist and social history that continues to influence our lives two hundred years after those pioneers who

changed the world.” (Full review by FATEA here).

2025 dawns!

The year began on a high as I was invited to perform one of the album songs to launch LNER's latest named Azuma 'Darlington', an event which brought together key partners working towards the bicentenary year. (Over the year, I would see the familiar faces at events across the year, including but by no means limited to Caroline Hardie and Niall Hammond from the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway whose knowledge of the S&DR surpasses anyone I know, the Bishop Line's Felicity Machnicki. We now feel well and truly like a railway family!).

I launched 'Passengers & Pioneers' on 14 March 2025, to coincide with the Community Rail Awards where the Bishop Line Community Rail Partnership received two much deserved awards for their media campaign to promote all the incredible visitor attractions along the line (amazing collaboration centered around telling the story of the 200 year celebrations) as well as community artwork at Shildon station that has made a huge impact on local residents feeling of safety and belonging. The album was launched at The Common Room in Newcastle - a venue that once was home to the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers and part-funded by the legacy of Robert Stephenson - a figure whose father George was crucial to the success of the S&DR.

Later that month, I found myself performing in front of Michael Portillo outside the Carriage Works of Hopetown as the BBC TV cameras filmed an impromptu performance of the album which would later feature on BBC Two's Michael Portillo's 200 Years of the Railways where the producers very kindly gave airtime to two tracks 'Pioneers' and 'Dreaming in September' as well as a short interview and live performance.

Over the summer, I toured the album around the North East with different poets joining me, including Harry Gallagher and Lizzie Lovejoy at Durham Fringe Festival as well as Lizzie and Carmen Marcus at 'HARK!', a unique performance at Darlington Library with Phil Cox, also performing original songs inspired by the North East's railway heritage. There was a lovely moment at this gig where a man in the audience came up to me to tell me he was the very archivist who discovered the letter John Backhouse had written to his sister (the letter that inspired my song My Dear Sister) in a private collection and hearing this song justified the tricky decision he made to fork out a significant amount of money in the National Rational Museum's budget more than 20 years ago!

One of my gigging highlights was being invited to play at Darlington Folk Club for a special event they'd organised titled 'A History of the Railways in Folk Music'. The first half was beautifully narrated, with covers and original songs written to celebrate the railway heritage of the North East. I couldn't believe the depth and insight of their songs - what a gem to discover!

I also found myself performing at various London terminus train station platforms, adding a musical backdrop to the Inspiration Train, Railway 200's magnificent storytelling train that would engage the public with the past, present and future of the railway. (Think the Story Train, but much bigger!)

We were all dreaming in September

September 2025 arrived like a long lost friend, the month I had been dreaming about for half a decade. Most of it was spent locked in the studio frantically rehearsing for The Railway Children, a modern adaption of the originally beautifully written by Becci Sharrock, that told the story of three young children who stumble upon the world’s first passenger railway with all the adventure and mischief of the original.

When I causally said to Becci ‘feel free to give me more lines’ (having read the script realising the other storyteller had most of the play to learn in just two weeks), I hadn’t realised that learning lines is only a fraction of the role of an actor. Learning when to say them, how to deliver them, how to switch between embodying different characters, became a world I briefly inhabited – and very much enjoyed! - thanks to the skilled instruction of Jonluke McKie, the director.  

On Tuesday 24 September, The Railway Children was performed at Hullabaloo Theatre in Darlington to 100 Year 5/6s from Middlesbrough and Darlington and then the following day to another 120 children at Locomotion museum, to the backdrop of heritage locomotives of all kind. A big thanks to the very talented actor Caitlin Fairlamb who willingly took on this role and learnt a full hour of narration in a very short span of time and performed it so excellently.

Pupils from a primary school in Darlington at the Hullabaloo Theatre, Darlington

The week then concluded with a performance of Passengers & Pioneers at Hackworth Park in Shildon on Saturday 27th September – the 200^th year anniversary to the day of the launch of the famous S&DR - for ‘Anniversary Picnic’ a celebration put on by SDR200. The performance also included a reunion of Rosie's Shildon Railway Institute Singers and spectacular performances of STEAM, a newly commissioned dance piece by Southpaw Company.

Then, the grand finale…

At 0.45am in the early hours of Sunday 28th September, I took to the stage one final time.

This time, however, on a brightly lit pop-up stage on Platform 1 at Darlington Station, with the historic arches lit in a celebratory red, with LNER's special liveried 'Darlington' Azuma I helped launch back in January. As I began my set, accompanied perfectly by vocalists Rosie Bradford and Samantha Townsend, theatrical smoke pumped up filling the station creating a veil for the much anticipated replica Locomotion No. 1 that would be gracing the platform shortly. It was certainly a surreal moment singing “he gets off at Darlington and stands beneath the arches…” and “on the 27^th day, the 9^th month of the year, what a mighty sight to see…” Words sung that chimed so reverently with the moment.

As it happened, Locomotion No. 1 took a little while longer to arrive, so our 10-minute reworking of Pioneers (the track intended to reach its height as the train pulled up) was brought to an early close, as the LNER representative welcomed all the VIP guests for a cup of tea in the meantime. At 01.29, Locomotion No. 1, her three waggons and passenger coach ‘Experiment’ finally arrived, huffing like a breathy beast to a platform full of expectant souls, teetering over the yellow line, cameras at the ready.

Myself, Lizzie Lovejoy, Rosie Bradford and Samantha Townsend

What a way to conclude 5 years of work. A huge thank you to everyone who has accompanied me along the way. The list of people is too exhaustive to cover, but if your name wasn’t listed above, know that you were part of the story too. So until the 250^th anniversary in 2075 (I’ll be 85, so not impossible… if we're all still on this planet...), don’t forget the railway that changed the world.