After working at the pin factory in Whitecroft, in 1958 Pam Box secured a new job at the Lydney Telephone Exchange. Here Pam describes the work, connecting callers across the Forest or on to other exchanges beyond, and how she still remembers to this day the numbers of some of the callers.
When Pam arrived in Lydney for work at the Telephone Exchange early on the morning of October 26th 1960 she could tell something was amiss. During the night two barges had struck the railway bridge across the Severn causing an explosion and severing the electricity and gas mains it carried.
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James Bevan recalls how his father Roy, with Roy's brother Fred, set up the Soudley Valley bus company, and how they came to have such a distinctive livery. Roy was working for local entrepreneur John Joiner who part-owned a bus company in Stratford. Joiner knew a change in the law was coming in 1930 that would make it harder to set up, so advised the brothers to get started straight away and found them their first bus.
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A bicycle could be the first step to transport independence or sometimes just the only way to get to work. With cars being beyond the reach of many the next step up would be a motorcycle. Mike Hinton believed his father (pictured) had at one time one of the first motorbikes in the area and here he describes how he later bought his own.
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