BACK in the good old days, before Dr Beeching reached for his axe, Worcestershire and Herefordshire were dotted with rural railway stations.

Steam trains puffed and huffed across river and meadow, smoke rising and steam hissing, as they carried people, produce and occasionally animals, through the countryside.

The local halt was as much a part of the village as the post office or the police station.

Rushwick had one, so did Bransford, Knightwick, Suckley, Fernhill Heath and Fladbury.

They're all gone now, of course, along with most of the others. Many of the former stations have been converted into desirable country homes and miles and miles of branch line track have been ripped up and the land returned to agriculture or the undergrowth.

Here and there, often out in the middle of nowhere, you still come across the old brick bridges that once carried locomotives and carriages high above narrow lanes and if you look carefully you can still make out the route of an overgrown cutting, where labourers sweated to dig away the hillside by hand.

But to all intents and purposes the railway has vanished.

Now, thanks to modern technology, it is back.

That is, modern technology and Michael Clemens, a Pershore businessman whose father was a railway nut.

Back in the late 50s and early 60s, Jim Clemens, who ran an electrical shop in the town, was one of the few people to own a small cine camera.

Today, video cameras are 10 a penny, but half a century ago taking moving pictures required rather more expertise and Jim had a lot of practice.

He spent most of his spare time filming. Usually the subject was his other great love, railways.

"Every weekend we went off to some part of the country to look at railways," recalled Michael.

"And on Thursday afternoons, which in those days was half day closing.

"Even the family holidays were organised around visiting a railway."

The result was a library of more than 200 reels of railway nostalgia film, each 32 minutes long and taken between 1959 and 1965.

Since Jim's death in 1987, his son has been sifting through the collection and choosing sequences to be turned into hour-long videos for public sale.

The latest, called Great Western Steam around Worcestershire, will prove fascinating stuff for anyone who loves the Teme Valley, because it includes a wonderful look at the old Worcester to Bromyard line, which closed down in 1964.

According to Beeching's economics, 14,000 passengers were needed on the line each week to make it financially viable. But it was attracting less than half that and so the axe fell.

It was a sad end for a route that today would be lauded for the beauty of its countryside and the skill of its construction.

Building a railway across the rolling landscape of dips and climbs, rivers and thick woods was an engineering nightmare. A licence for the line was granted in 1861, but dogged by money problems, it was 10 years before work started and even then contractors were switched in mid-stream.

There was terrible trouble with earth slips at Knightwick, where deep cuttings were made, and two huge viaducts had to be built at Hayley Dingle and Broad Dingle, the first 70ft high with six spans.

The line eventually opened in 1877 and gained the nickname of the Hop Field, Plum and Cherry Orchard railway.

Despite its lack of passengers, it remained popular with farmers right up to the death. They used to queue at Knightwick, where Mrs Palmer was station mistress, to load up their produce and even in the 1960s, just before closure, the station was handling 1,500 boxes a day at the height of the fruit picking season.

Michael Clemens' film takes us back along the line, past Rushwick Halt, Leigh Court, Knightwick and Suckley and on to Bromyard, where the tank engine pulls forward to replenish its water tanks before turning round and taking the three coaches back to Worcester.

Incidentally, it's good to see railwaymen were keen readers of the News and Times - the Evening News' predecessor - because as the train passes through Bransford Road Junction, the crew of the locomotive throw out a copy of the evening paper to the signalman.

Suckley station had the only passing loop on the line and it was here in 1961, the Royal Train overnighted, before Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother travelled on to Worcester the following day to open Hillard Hall at the Royal Grammar School.

I know, because I was there. At the school, I mean. Not on the train.

The still photograph of Suckley station was taken by Michael himself on Saturday, November 3, 1962, when Worcester schoolmaster Ellis James-Robertson hired the train in the picture on behalf of a railway society.

The society members were allowed to drive and fire the engine themselves between Suckley and Bromyard, making 10 runs altogether. The total cost charged by British Railways for this freedom to "play trains" for the day with the real thing was just £42. A bargain in any language and a long time ago now.