Thousands of tiny characters made by people across Teesside and County Durham are about to arrive at the end of a rather unusual railway journey.
Memory of a Journey: Final Station opens at Hopetown Darlington on Saturday 5 September, bringing together thousands of hand-crafted peg dolls created by communities during the Stockton & Darlington Railway bicentenary celebrations.
Each figure carries its own small piece of the wider project. Together they form a large-scale record of the people, places and journeys that became part of S&DR200.
The exhibition is the final chapter of the Memory of a Journey project. Volunteers are also helping to digitise the collection through the S&DR 26 Miles Project, with a digital gallery due to launch later this year so the stories can continue beyond the physical exhibition.
For anyone who took part in the bicentenary programme, it is a chance to see individual contributions become part of something much bigger. For everyone else, it offers a particularly human way into the area's railway history, through thousands of objects made by the communities that live along the route today.
The exhibition runs from 5 to 27 September 2026, from 10am to 4pm. Hopetown is closed on Mondays during term time. Entry to the exhibition is free, although Hopetown recommends booking online or at the Welcome Desk in the Goods Shed.
: Hopetown Darlington. Full event and booking information is available from the original source linked with this article.