When other small boys were messing about with toy cars, identical twins Craig - right - and Carl Lawson were tinkering with the real thing.

If anything mechanical broke down at their family home in Cowling, the two lads would be there helping dad Richard to fix it.

And one of their mum's abiding images is of her sons underneath a car helping their father.

Dawn Lawson explained: "I can still remember looking in the barn and seeing my husband's big boots sticking out from under a car, and next to him two pairs of little feet."

Now her 22-year-old undergraduate sons have been presented with Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) Whitworth Scholarship Awards by Margaret Hodge, Minister for Lifelong Learning. Only 11 are presented nationally.

Richard and Dawn, of Crag End Farm, Cowling, joined their sons in London for the ceremony.

Said Mrs Lawson: "It was a wonderful occasion. We are very proud of the boys. Engineering is in their blood. Their dad is a mechanic, their grandfather and my father were engineers," she added.

The twins - students at Loughborough University - are former pupils of Ermysted's Grammar School, Skipton.

They both left to take up modern apprenticeships with Landis Lund, machine tools, at Eastburn, and continued their engineering studies at Keighley College.

In 1998 they won the college's top engineering apprenticeship awards and had previously competed in the BBC Robot Olympics with their robot swimming fish.

Jeff Carr, quality and training manager at Landis Lund, said: "They were outstanding apprentices.

"You rarely find people like that anymore."

The Whitworth Scholarship is for academic achievement and commitment to careers in engineering.

An awards spokesman said the twins were currently studying for an MEng in Mechanical Engineering.

"Each year the IMechE, in association with the Department for Education and Skills, offer Whitworth Scholarship Awards to outstanding students who are about to embark on or have already commenced an engineering degree," he said.