A FORMER railway man wants to highlight all the good work railway men carried out in Hereford’s community.

This photo shows some of the railway men who worked in Hereford and lived at the Redhill Hostel in 1947.

John Davies, age 89, said he lived at the hostel with many other railway men after the munitions factory workers left after the war.

He said: “I wanted to put on record the part played by railway men in the community.

“At one time we had 14 railway men as councillors and seven of those went on to become mayor of the city.

“There were also seven railway men sitting as magistrates.”

He started working for Great Western Railway in 1942 and finished in 1993.

Mr Davies came to Hereford in 1946 and was based at Barton Yard.

He said: “We were a very closeknit community. When I arrived in Hereford there were over 1,000 employees in Herefordshire.

"There was about 400 a day working through Barton Yard.”

Mr Davies was on the trades council for more than 40 years and was a long-serving governor at Whitecross School.

He said railway men were among the founders of the Hereford Labour Party and they raised a lot of money for charity.