"Disgusting, decrepit and verminous," was how the Chronicle described Blaydon's vandalised railway station back in January 1977.
Forty-five years ago, the once-elegant station was set for demolition after badly falling into disrepair during the previous decade.
Earlier in time, six years after the formation of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, trains began steaming in and out of Blaydon in 1835 when a service between the town and Hexham began operating.
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The first-day services, hauled by locomotives called Rapid and Comet, were eventful affairs with derailments of some of the coaches.
A year later, the cross-country route between Blaydon and Carlisle was under way, and the line soon settled down to provide a reliable link between the North East and North West.
By 1839, you could also catch a train to a temporary terminus in Newcastle, and by 1851, you could travel to Newcastle Central - one year after the station opened.
Blaydon's once-elegant red-brick station complete with its glass canopies, dated from 1912.
That same same year, reported the Chronicle, a man called Matthew Robson standing on the platform with two large boxes on a barrow was approached by a policeman drawn by an "offensive smell". Inside the boxes, he found 42 rabbits, many of them dead and dying. Robson was charged with causing unnecessary suffering to the animals.
In 1914 the station witnessed a terrible tragedy when a young local man called Thomas Bellerby, after catching the 11pm service from Newcastle Central, alighted the train, but was dragged along the platform after getting his arm caught in the coach door, finally falling on to the tracks where he was crushed to death.
Much later, in 1963, Blaydon was recommended for closure under the Beeching Report of 1963, but it escaped the axe and the station continued as an un-staffed stop.
By 1977 when the vandalised station buildings were set to be demolished, one railway enthusiast even referred to Blaydon as “probably Britain’s least attractive station”.
For some years afterwards, services at the new station were relatively infrequent, with sometimes only three trains a day stopping.
Today, Northern Trains runs a service between Newcastle, Hexham and other destinations, stopping at Blaydon once an hour.
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