A GROUP of pensioners is campaigning for the North East to mark the 200th anniversary of what it says is the world’s oldest steam railway.
A band of OAPs who live along the route of what was the Wylam to Lemington Wagonway are calling on bodies in the region to lay on events to commemorate two centuries since it became operational in 1814.
The group, whose members live at Newburn, is led by Michael Balfour, a steam rail enthusiast.
He was researching the history of the railway several years ago for a poem, and discovered its opening in 1814 made it ‘the first steam railway (that actually worked) anywhere in the world.’
Mr Balfour, 70, of West Denton Close, has now written to Northumberland County and Newcastle City councils, The National Railway Museum and Beamish – which is said to have a working replica of the famous engine Puffing Billy which operated on the line – to ask if they would be prepared to help in the organisation of celebratory events. He has also approached Wylam Parish Council. To date, Mr Balfour has received verbal support from the parish council but no reply from the others.
He has visions of events being run simultaneously at Wylam station and Tyne Riverside Country Park at Newburn, close to Lemington and where bosses are said to be behind the group’s idea, with an engine of some kind – ideally the Puffing Billy replica – taking people across the Northumberland and Tyneside border and between the two sites.
Mr Balfour feels such events would have to be organised by a group involving the kind of bodies he has approached, and that he and his friends would not be able to manage alone.
