Ticket which allows us to hop off and on the train?

[WolvertonWorks]

We (two senior railcards) will be in Marske (MSK) next week and are planning a day trip on the train on Tuesday to Bishop Auckland, probably on the 10:03 departure.
I've chosen the wrong day as the castle isn't open on a Tuesday so after we've had a wander around I was thinking of stopping off on the return journey to have a look at potentially a couple of other railway related things.

If the weather is awful we might not go as far as Bishop Auckland but buy the ticket to Shildon and visit Locomotion - have been before and loved it.

The two places of particular interest are Heighington station, although not sure there is enough to keep us interested for an hour until the next train, and Hopetown at Darlington North Road.

There are advance tickets available from MSK to Bishop Auckland but they obviously aren't what we need to give us some flexibility but if we buy off peak day returns, restriction code appears to be B3 which means we can't leave until after 9am, can we break our return journey at Heighington and North Road? Or do we need any anytime day return to do that?

Thanks in advance

 

[jfollows]

You can break your journey as often as you want with an off peak day return.
The only condition is that you continue in the same direction when you resume. You can also stop short if you decide not to go all the way to Bishop Auckland on the day.
All tickets allow break of journey unless they explicitly say otherwise, and of course advance tickets don’t allow break of journey.

 

[WolvertonWorks]

Thanks for confirming my thoughts. Off peak day return it is - fingers crossed for the weather.

 

[ainsworth74]

If the weather is awful we might not go as far as Bishop Auckland but buy the ticket to Shildon and visit Locomotion - have been before and loved it.

Depending on how long it's been since your last visit Shildon is well worth going back to. The main hall has been a bit revamped and the stuff in there is very well presented but their new hall (up the hill) is excellent, it manages to tell quite a coherent story about railways and industry (with a North East flavour) and I was very impressed by it. I actually think that it's better than the main NRM in York (though I've not been there for a while).

The two places of particular interest are Heighington station, although not sure there is enough to keep us interested for an hour until the next train, and Hopetown at Darlington North Road.

I wouldn't bother with Heighington station personally, yes it's got the oldest station building in the world but as far as I'm aware there's not actually anything to see there at the moment apart from the still boarded up building! The Friends of the S&DR are now working on making it something useful having secured it's future through crowdfunding and a big donation from Hitachi but it's still work in progress. One to return to in the future I think. Hopetown however is worth a visit (though I've not been for a good few years, it was still the Head of Steam when I did!) as by all accounts it's another good little museum.

 

[D6130]

It's a shame that the pub in the station building at Heighington closed down. It would have made a cosy little break on your homeward journey.