All dolled up!
Massed ranks of dolls recall bicentenary year of historic railway. Tony Henderson reports
More than 10,000 dolls are on display in a line-up continuing last year’s celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the world’s first passenger train journey.
Organisers of the Stockton & Darlington Railway Bicentenary Festival distributed 22,000 peg dolls which people could decorate or craft to represent their own most memorable rail journey.
There was a huge response and ranks of the dolls have been displayed in an exhibition, Memory of a Journey at Durham County Council’s Durham Town Hall, which closes on Sunday (May 31).
The exhibition coincides with a major milestone for the venue, with the Great Hall, where the dolls will be on display, marking its 175th anniversary this year.
Sarah Glynn, Durham County Council’s strategic manager for culture, said: “Standing side by side in mass ranks awaiting our inspection, this exhibition is a fun and moving spectacle, with such an outpouring of people’s memories and stories having gone into the dolls.
“It’s also fitting that such a celebration of history is being held in the Great Hall in this, the 175th year since it opened to the public.”
The railway is celebrated for hosting the world’s first passenger train journey, which began at Witton Park, in County Durham, and picked people up for the first time at Shildon and took them to Stockton, in 1825.
Taking inspiration from the memory of their favourite journey, thousands of children and adults from community groups, schools and care homes across County Durham and Tees Valley took part in workshops to personalise their own peg doll, giving each a unique character.
Tied around the neck of each doll is a brown luggage label containing the name of its maker and a hand-written message relating to the journey that the doll represents.
Since it would be impractical to allow visitors to pick up and handle the peg dolls to read what is written on the luggage labels, a soundscape has been created, adding voices reading aloud the captured memories.
The exhibition is open at the town hall, in Market Place, from 10am to 3pm.
The dolls and the memories shared for Memory of a Journey have been digitised to ensure these stories are not forgotten, and the digital files will be lodged with the National Railway archives, creating a snapshot of the community that participated in the festival.
The dolls will also go on display at Hopetown railway heritage centre in Darlington in September.
Bicentenary Festival director Niccy Hallifax said that the project had opened up the opportunity for thousands of people to be part of the celebrations.
Dolls went to care homes, schools, community centres, libraries, prisons, shopping centres, social clubs, hospitals, museums and civic hubs across the region.
Niccy said: “For 200 years, trains have connected people and places. So we invited communities in the region and beyond to reflect on their own unforgettable journey.
“The dolls prompted people to use their imagination and craft skills. It created a world of its own.
“We needed a mechanism for getting people involved in the festival and to create an archive so the history would not be lost. It really took off and has produced an amazing legacy.”