THE clock will turn back 65 years at Severn Valley Railway this weekend and next in nostalgic events aiming to answer the frequently asked question: What was it like during the war?

This is because the tourist attraction is holding the first of this year's 1940s war weekends which are expected to bring more than 10,000 visitors to the Kidderminster to Bridgnorth steam railway.

They will feature a host of stunning re-enactments of the days of the Bakelite wireless and sounds of the big bands and overnight bombing raids by the Luftwaffe.

The spirit of the Second World War will be recreated with the help of real Spitfires flying overhead, mock battles between Allied soldiers and German troops and groups of "evacuee children" waiting with their suitcase for the next train "to the country".

The ever-popular tourist attraction has been running for years but boasts a new element this year after railway volunteers reconstructed two rooms of a typical 1940s house.

The kitchen and living room, built over six months within the reinforced plywood walls of a "set" by 1940s weekends organiser, Malcolm Broadhurst, have been furnished with all the now-antique gizmos and gadgets of the time, including a mangle, washboard and flowery wallpaper and frumpy curtains.

To emphasise the austerity of the war years when meat was rationed, re-enactors will be seen peeling spuds and cooking "scraggy-looking" poultry.

Mr Broadhurst described his creation as a "simple film set within a film set" and said the idea for it came "almost by accident" when they just showed a collection of old cookers, radios and washing machines and realised they were halfway towards furnishing the downstairs of a typical 1940s family home.