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The money raised will go towards Avanti West Coast's charity partner Action for Children and the Railway Benefit Fund, which supports railwaymen and women and their families.

"Now, being a railwayman, I thought he'd either missed a speed restriction sign or there was something else wrong. I don't remember anything else after that," he says.

JH: “You were a railwayman and you voted Labour all your life. You know of old that if we get Conservative governments, they don’t make anything better.”

Loach has always admired “railwaymen” for their tight organisation and solidarity: he clearly enjoyed bringing out their camaraderie in an appealing film that had self-evident real-world parallels.

The path he was interested in started down the side of a bombed house, fairly new, perhaps a railwayman's cottage rebuilt after the last time.