Happy Birthday, Steevo!

[Colin Howard]

From Chris Biles.

Hi folks.


My reason for posting this a few minutes into the new day, is that one of
our members has what I might call a significant milestone birthday. This
fact might be fairly well known to some members already, by virtue of some
previous plans to celebrate the birthday concerned as an extension to this
year's AVIP spring weekend, which had to be abandoned for reasons which need
no introduction here.



Anyway a very happy birthday to the man, who not only shares his surname
with the much acclaimed pioneer of railway engineering as highlighted by his
world famous rocket locomotive, but who hails from the same part of the
country where the first section of railway line came into fruition just over
200 years ago.



Even more interestingly, the person concerned was born in the same County
Durham village, which over recent years has acquired recognition as being
the location of the world's first passenger railway station, and this just a
stone's throw away from the Hitachi manufacturing plant, which assembles
modern rolling stock for various parts of the UK rail network.



And now, having self evidently had something of a pre-birthday bash last
Friday which a few members were able to attend, we've reached the landmark
date, which corresponds with a day back in 1956, when our celebrant began
their illustrious odyssey within the temporal realms of this universe.



So on behalf of this association, can I wish a certain David Stephenson
every good wish for such a stratospheric, or even meteoric occasion. Not so
much a case of 7-up, but 70 and upwards. How about that for a tenuous
reference to rocket engineering.



Regards to one and all.



Chris B.