Pioneers who helped set railway on right track

THE arrival of the railways brought change by the wagonload.

- By TONY HENDERSON

Locomotives and a rapidly expanding rail network transformed lives and economies in towns and cities across the world on the back of the achievements of North East pioneers.

That railway heritage is everywhere in the region and is especially clustered in a particular sector of Newcastle.

Now Newcastle-based railway expert and author Les Turnbull has produced a book packed with fascinating Tyneside railway facts and which doubles as a guide for a circular walk focused on the Central Station, its surrounds and the Quayside.

It illustrates how much railway history on the doorstep is largely overlooked. Les says: "There is an enormous railway presence. There is so much railway heritage but Tyneside has neglected that heritage."

He poses the question of what elements of the North East would feature in a short book of the history of the world.

His answer: "It is unlikely that our Roman, Anglo-Saxon or medieval treasures would appear. What would be certain to appear would be our railway heritage, for engineers from this region gave the world both the railways and the steam locomotive.