“Our life was the railways.”

- Terry Theobald, train driver (Magor)

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Terry Theobald (Emma Drabble)

“My first memories are lying in bed at night at Rogiet. You could hear the steam train whistles and the tannoy echoing: ‘Brake van in number 8!’ The hustle and bustle would echo around the village. Wonderful.”

By the age of 15 Terry was a runner at Severn Tunnel Junction. It was 1972 and the Tunnel, finished in 1885, was still the world’s longest underwater structure. The goods marshalling yard on the Gwent side was vast and not without dangers: runners ran alongside moving wagons, shunting them down the slopes with long poles. “One guy here lost his legs doing it.”

Terry quit the railways for a while after trying to rescue a woman who fell from Cardiff platform: “I jumped on the track to pull her off, but I never quite got to her. She was run over by the train.” Eventually this modest hero returned to his railways and, like his grandfather before him, became a driver.

He’s witnessed much change on the Levels: “The people who used to live here can’t afford to anymore. They call that progress. Well, we all have an opinion on that!” But nothing alters those childhood memories: “New Year’s Eve in the marshalling yards was no different from any other working night except that at midnight all the drivers would blow the steam whistles. Wonderful.”

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Life on the Levels

“It was all coal.”

- Ray Evans, railway man (Magor)

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Ray Evans (Emma Drabble)

Ray Evans started on the railways at 15, one of around 300 locomotive staff based at the Severn Tunnel junction. “Everybody worked on the railway virtually.”

Ray’s first job was knocker up. “The locomotive charge man would say ‘go and knock William Davis up at 25 Ifton Terrace, Rogiet’ and you’d ride the bike over there, knock the door and he’d go: ‘Alright’.” Ray rose through the ranks. Next stop? Engine cleaner: “You used oil and rag and you cleaned the paint of the locomotives.” Eventually Ray became a diesel engine driver, but not before a spell as fireman on the last of the steam-driven goods trains. The fireman’s job was tough. “You could move four or five tons of coal in a shift if you were going to London - hard work.”

Working on the Severn Tunnel freight trains Ray carried everything from race horses for the Chepstow Races, munitions for the Falkland and Iraq wars, and cars aboard the daily shuttle that preceded the opening of the road bridge. Then there were the ‘banker’ runs, assisting heavier steam freight through the Tunnel.

Above it was coal, the black gold that powered south Wales: “There was a colliery every two miles or so up the Valleys and you had to bring all that down.” In his time, he has witnessed all sorts of ‘special’ trains come through, including pigeons! “If there was a race, we would get pigeon specials come through with trains loaded up with racing pigeons. We would get the baskets off the train and then release them!”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview:

Ray Evans is a retired train driver from Caerwent. He started as a fireman at the tail end of the steam age, before progressing to diesel engines right up until his retirement. He witnessed the giant marshalling yards at Rogiet and the busy Severn Tunnel Junction. In his spare time, he races pigeons from the club’s base at Portskewett.

“We spent half our life on the Moors.”

- Iris Theobald and Ivy James, railway children (Rogiet)

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Iris Theobald and Ivy James (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Ivy, Terry and Iris

George and Fanny Kibbey moved from Worcestershire to work on the Great Western Railway. As daughter Iris Theobald recalls: “Nearly every family had a man working on the railway.” Iris had four sisters: Ivy, Olive, May and Rose. Ivy (James) remembers the family receiving cheap coal. “The railway would dump a ton in the road and we’d to shovel it into the coal house.”

Their father drove steam engines on ‘double homes’ (staying one night away) and emergency stand-ins - “the call boy came knocking any time of the day or night to get him up.” The Royal Train, meanwhile, was sometimes parked close to the Severn Tunnel near Portskewett Station. “They said it was a secret, but we all knew.”

The railway sisters would roam the Levels. Iris: “The fields were just all wild flowers: we spent half our life on the Moors. There’d be cockling between the tides - you’d got to be careful - the tide comes in quickly” and perhaps a penny’s worth of ice cream in a glass on Sundays “shared because there was no money then”.

“We’d be down the moors, make a house in the woods, follow the fox hounds and red coats, or chat to the Gypsies with their brown and white horses and old-fashioned caravans.” When war came there was munition work, making blackout headlamp covers and, if you were lucky, dancing with GIs. It was, says Ivy, “ten time better than it is now.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview:

Iris and Ivy grew up in ‘railway’ town, Rogiet, where their father worked on steam trains. They reflect on the building of the M4, wartime fun, wildlife and the sea wall.