PREVIEW

The first North Pole Express of the year steams to the "north pole" on the Tanfield Railway in County Durham this morning in lovely warm sunshine.

Tanfield is the World’s Oldest Railway. Dating back to 1725, a whole century before the Stockton and Darlington Railway, Tanfield Railway is the world’s oldest railway and has an unrivalled history. The line was built to transport coal from collieries in the Tanfield area to the River Tyne for shipment using the latest technology and groundbreaking engineering of the day