We return to an age when the North East was still crisscrossed by an incredibly complex system of railway lines.
Passengers, coal and freight were all transported around our region on a rail network of almost dizzying scope.
Now, the latest edition in the popular Railways Memories series from Bellcode Books takes us back to the 1950s and 1960s when the south east corner of Northumberland was the most intensively mined area of Britain.
It was a time when the area was traversed by steam-powered railways, not just the Blyth and Tyne lines of British Rail, but also the myriad mineral lines belonging to the coal industry.
Today, these railways have now all gone apart from the core route of the Blyth and Tyne, much of it reduced to single track.
The North East, as we were taught at school, was integral to the development of the railways.
Engineer, George Stephenson, born in Wylam in Northumberland in 1781, is regarded as the “father of the railway” and was responsible for what was essentially the first inter-city line - Liverpool to Manchester in 1830.
A memorial statue to Stephenson sits a stone’s throw from Newcastle’s magnificent Newcastle Central Station which, in turn, was one of the achievements of son Robert, who carried on his father’s work.
The Central Station, opened by Queen Victoria in 1850 - and built in tandem with the High Level Bridge across the Tyne - allowed rail travel between Newcastle and London for the first time.
Rail networks spread like wildfire across the country - and indeed the globe - in the mid-nineteenth century.
People, coal and goods could be transported in hours, where before it had taken days.
The book, The Blyth and Tyne by Stephen Chapman, is packed with 196 photographs and detailed explanations.
Stephen says: “Today we can only reflect on the vibrancy and bustle of Tyneside’s industries, and the tangled network of railways which connected them to each other and the outside world.”
The colliery railways such as the Hartley Main and the Ashington are all covered in the book, as well as passenger lines like Manors North to Monkseaton, North and South Blyth, and many more.
The Blyth and Tyne, railway memories no. 29, by Stephen Chapman, published by Bellcode Books, is on sale now priced £17.99.
Email: bellcode4books@yahoo, or telephone 01262 421961.