MP RUTH Kelly took part in a ceremony to name a train after one of her Transport Secretary predecessors.

The Bolton West MP watched a train being named in honour of the late Labour MP Barbara Castle at Blackburn. The name plate was unveiled by Baroness Castle’s neice, Sonya Hinton.

The group then travelled to Manchester’s Oxford Road station for a ceremony attended by around 100 people.

Ms Kelly said: “I’m not sure what Barbara would have thought about my first year in her old job or the changes to public transport over the last ten years of the Labour Government.

“I hope she would be pleased with how we’ve taken forward her legacy and what we’ve achieved using her solid building blocks on road safety, local accountability, a strong and growing railway and the reversal of the decline in bus use.”

Baroness Castle, a former Daily Mirror journalist, was a Blackburn MP for many years and held leading roles in Labour Governments of the 1960s and 1970s, including Minister for Transport. She later became a Greater Manchester MEP. She died in 2002.