BUDE’S railway station is to ‘re-open’ for four nights only this month.

Bude Youth Theatre will be bringing the railway station, which closed 50 years ago, back to life with its production of ‘The Last Train to Bude . . .?’

To create the play the actors from Bude Youth Theatre interviewed Trevor Knight, Len Tozer, Andy Walter, Adrian Abbott, Judith Gwynne, Ralph Daniel, and also used some archive Bude Youth Theatre interviews from 2001 with Bryan Dudley Stamp, Joyce Jodrell, Harvey Kendall and Jean Osbourne.

Stories and characters have been melded together with some creative invention to tell the story of trains in Bude, through an action-packed drama full of music, movement and original songs, which is ideal for all the family.

Len Tozer, one of those interviewed by the youth theatre, who lives at Bude, told the Post: “I was just a passenger. I’m 82 years old and I can remember as a child riding the railway all the way up to Sheffield, Newark, Nottingham, care of the guard — all on my own. You could do those things in those days.”

Mr Tozer said the railway at Bude was a ‘lifeline’ and that he was ‘heartbroken’ when it closed, adding: “As a young man my mother used to take me to Holsworthy market on the train, I went off to the wide world doing National Service on the train, went up to see my sisters during the war on the train.

“I have lovely memories of the railway.”

Adrian Abbott, who lives at Morwenstow, was also interviewed by the youth theatre. He told the Post that his great grandfather was one of the first employees, and his grandfather and father also worked on the railway — his father worked there until the railway’s last day.

He said: “Fifteen years of my early life were spent on the railway. It was a hub of the local community. Just a shame it has gone.

“It affected a lot of local families like any business when it closes, and you have to find something else.

“When the circus used to come to town the elephants would parade through the town. Soldiers used to come — masses of them all turning up at once.

“August on a Saturday at Bude Station — it was mayhem down there.

“It’s a piece of history that won’t be repeated in Bude, certainly.

Trevor Knight, who lives at Bude, said his father was a driver at Bude, and Trevor himself was at Bude in the ‘steam days’, adding he ‘finished off as a driver on the diesels’.

He said: “I’ve got some lovely memories. Back in them days a lot of the blokes were characters and that’s how you knew people more than anything. They all had nicknames!”

‘The Last Train to Bude . . . ?’ has been written and directed by Richard Wolfenden-Brown with original songs by Kath Morrison, choreography by Clare Collingham and musical direction by Thomas Marples.

The play begins in the future — it is August 2016 and Sophie Drover is studying for a degree in Sustainable Transport.

When she comes to visit her grandparents on Bulleid Way, Bude, to carry out research on the history of the Bude Railway, she expects to spend the day in her grandad’s shed, a shrine to the railway made of old sleepers, but she ends up discovering as much about the future as the past.

Through words, songs, movement and dozens of characters, this fast moving new play with songs celebrates the life of the railway in Bude and the lives of all those for whom trains were much more than just a means of transport, the local leaders who fought for it for 50 years, the 800 navvies who built it, the staff who worked on it, the evacuees who sought sanctuary through it, the locals who prospered from it, the holidaymakers and elephants who arrived on it, the national politicians who closed it and every rail passenger who has ever thought ‘wherever I travel, I know I can always take the train home’.

Thirty young actors and musicians from the youth theatre will perform their lively new play from Wednesday, March 16 to Saturday, March 19.

The two-hour production will be performed at Budehaven Community School at 7.30pm from the Wednesday to Saturday, with a matinee at 12.30pm on Friday, March 18.

The matinee is almost sold out to five local primary schools but tickets for the evening performances — £6 adults/£4 children — can be obtained in advance from the Ark Angel Christian Bookshop and The Seventh Wave Gallery in Bude or on the door.

Tickets can also be bought online via wegottickets. Proceeds from the raffle and refreshments will be donated to the Friends of Bude Sea Pool.