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The Old Curiosity Railway Shop

The Railway Curiosity Shop of Wonder in John Street, Stroud Alec is always busy in his shop, Mending clocks and repairing engines, Walking past trucks and carriages and bottles and level crossings – But when sunlight flashed through the rainswept window, Alec, like Dickens, performing his characters, Stopped to entertain me with his memories: ‘I started work in the hot summer of ’76. My mum, who worked in the canteen in Swindon Works, making cakes for the drivers, wanted me to get a job. Mum was forever dashing out to take in the washing in the old days of steam as our house in Brimscombe backed down to the line. Anyway, the foreman at the NCB at Stonehouse knew my brother, and he asked: “Can you start tomorrow?” I clocked on at 7 for a 40 hour-week; 7-4.30 with an hour for dinner...

Between the Lines

BETWEEN THE LINES BY RICHARD DRY          I grew up in the 1970s in Stonehouse, just off Oldends Lane on the edge of the Park Estate, smack-bang in the middle between two main railway lines. Looking north from my bedroom window, the Stroud to Gloucester line sat...

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Pride comes before a Fall

Pride comes before a Fall You know the shop in John Street with all the bottles and jars and bikes and signs outside, and all the vintage toy railway engines inside: all those toy trucks and carriages and level crossings and signals and oh so much more. The one by...

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Dirty Old Stroud by Richard Dry

DIRTY OLD STROUD Before Stroud had a by-pass – or a Waitrose – it had a scrapyard. The Salvage and Recovery yard stretched all the way from what is now Travis Perkins to the railway viaduct, filling the space between the Stroudwater Canal and the River Frome. The...

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