Heighington is a railway station on the Tees Valley Line, which runs between and via . The station, situated north-west of Darlington, serves the villages of Aycliffe and Heighington in County Durham, England. It is owned by Network Rail and managed by Northern Trains. The station is on the Bishop Line which is a community railway from Bishop Auckland to Darlington. It is somewhat unusual in that its platforms are staggered, sited either side of a level crossing. The station has kept its listed manual signal box (which supervises the aforementioned crossing, the connection into the Hitachi plant and the single line section south of here through to Darlington), but this had its semaphore signals replaced by colour lights when the connection into the Hitachi factory was installed and commissioned in November 2014. History The station lies on the route of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&D), the first public railway. It was here in 1825 that Locomotion No. 1 designed by George Stephenson was placed on the track prior to first journey. Once it was placed on the line and all was ready, it was found that nobody had means of lighting the boiler. Stephenson sent a messenger to get a lit lantern. However, at this point a navvy called Robert Metcalf stepped forward and offered use of his "burning glass" (a piece of glass similar to a magnifying glass) which he used to light his pipe. It was with this that Stephenson was able to light the boiler for that first journey. The main line of the S&D was opened on 27 September 1825 from Phoenix Colliery at Etherley to Stockton, and this station was opened the same day, being originally named Aycliffe Lane. It was subsequently renamed three times: first to Aycliffe and Heighington, later, on 1 July 1871, it became Aycliffe, although this name lasted for just over three years, because on 1 September 1874 it gained the present name of Heighington. The grade II listed signal box was opened 1872 and was originally commissioned by the North Eastern Railway Central Division. It is one of the earliest signal boxes in the country still in existence and it is believed that at the most only four pre-date it. The design was possibly by Thomas Prosser, the company's architect. The building fits the earliest Central Division design which the Signalling Study Group classified the design as Type