From 1958 until about 1961 every penny of pocket money was saved and Darlington was visited about every five weeks, thus giving plenty of time for the Works to turn over a new batch of locomotives. We would travel down by train on Sunday morning to Darlington Bank Top, get the bus along to the Works and we’d first visit the scrap yard.
Darlington scrap yard was a wonderfully atmospheric place just outside the old North Road Station on the Shildon line. It was basically a field with railway lines, some basic earthwork ‘platforms’, and very easy to access (I believe it was originally used to unload livestock). During our visits many of the old NER locomotives awaited their fate here ‘A8s’, ‘B16s’, ‘D20s’, ‘G5s’, ‘NIOs’, ‘J21/25/26/27s, J71/72/77s’, Tls’, as…