I’m having a rather expensive sandwich and a cup of tea (not many people drink tea now, I find it’s become an ‘old persons’ beverage) in a coffee bar which proudly boasts on the signage that it was ‘established 1999.’ It is situated in the former railway factory established slightly earlier – in 1843!
The model train has just done a circuit – a nod to the railway history of the McArthur Glen Designer Outlet Village. In all fairness there are plenty of reminders – machinery, overhead cranes and the war memorials to the railwaymen who gave their lives in two world wars.
There is still a generation of railwaymen around who can remember the Works when it closed in 1986 making 1,100 redundant. A far cry from the glory days of the 1920s when there were more than 14,000 on the payroll.
As I sit here enjoying my sandwich and (generous) mug of tea, listening to the hum of conversation around me, I think of all those men who spent a lifetime grafting within these walls.
You may like to read the stories of some of them – see below.
Some railway stories
Elias Isaac Webb – still painting at the age of 83
Radnor Street Cemetery 