Metro driver stars on TV at Tanfield Railway

Sunderland Echo

A Metro driver trainer with a lifelong passion for railways has starred on national television, showcasing his tireless work to restore and preserve an historic steam locomotive.

Transcript

00:00and just tell us about your role here at Tanfield as a volunteer so i've been at

00:04Tanfield for around 20 years so i'm 32 so i started here when i was about 12 or 13 years old

00:09i've been a driver and i've been a footplate assessor i currently look after our workshop

00:16so there's loads of different roles that we all undertake here at the Tanfield railway and i think

00:20it's good that the the two come together between heritage and nexus we've got a lot of staff who

00:26have joined nexus either as an apprentice or as a trainee driver and they've got you know a

00:31background from heritage and that's really given them you know a lot of knowledge and skills and

00:35dedication to the role and you're restoring a steam engine tell us just a little bit about that

00:40yeah so probably about uh 2012 myself and a few friends bought a number 38 which was built new

00:46for rising sun colliery which is where the rising sun country park is now in walls end we bought the

00:52engine in a scrap condition there was a tree growing through it at the time and uh we're about

00:5660 70 percent of the way through restoring it so it's been a huge amount of work but hopefully in

01:01the next couple years we'll see it running on the Tanfield railway now that must be a real labor of

01:05love for you taking on a project like that yeah it's an enormous amount of work it's an enormous amount

01:10of cost and uh yeah it probably takes up a day and a half a week for the last five years and probably the

01:15next three easily but it's uh i think when it gets under your skin and becomes part of who you are

01:21you know the railways and the heritage you uh it just becomes what you do and it will be an enormously

01:26proud moment for you when you see that train restored and back in service yeah yeah uh i look forward to

01:32that day i think the best thing to do is just to plug away at it and and keep going every week and uh

01:37yeah hopefully a few years time we'll be able to see it running on the railway and enjoy it

01:41and i understand that you've been recently featured on national television here at Tanfield

01:45just talk about that a bit as well yeah so we've we've recently just featured in the bbc our live

01:50series um and they've done a production called the world's oldest railway where they focused on

01:54running this place restoring the engines uh we're currently building a wooden wagonway because the

01:59Tanfield railway was originally a wooden wagonway horse drawn um the Tanfield railway or the wagonway

02:04existed long before steam engines like this came around so um yeah they've featured all sorts of

02:09stuff about the history of the place because the northeast does have a huge heritage of railways you

02:14know it was the birthplace of the railways and at one point we were developing locomotives and sending

02:19them out to the world so you know it's uh it's been a really interesting journey to be on tv like that

02:25but um no it's excellent it's it's really good pay off the railway

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