HAVING one of the largest private collections of steam railway on film makes Michael Clemens a man much in demand.

"When the phone rings it is often someone asking me to do a show or perhaps a TV company asking if I can help them with a steam show from some area of the country or other," he said.

"Last week, for example, a TV company from Wales rang and asked if I could help with film footage of steam at Carmarthen station for a programme they were doing about a murder when a suspect travelled from Carmarthen to London by train."

It was a request Mr Clemens was easily able to accommodate. His vast collection covers railways from Penzance in the far south to Inverness in Scotland.

Much of it was taken by Mr Clemens' father Jim in the 1950s and 1960s and passed on to Michael Clemens when he died in 1987.

Michael was involved from a very early age. Although he did not at first do much of the cine work, he was busily engaged with a still camera, of which there are thousands of photographs, many still waiting to be catalogued.

Mr Clemens said. "When I was a lad, all family holidays were planned with filming in mind, and in the days when Thursdays were early closing days in Pershore, my father would go off all over the place - and as long as it was not during school time, I was there as well."

Mr Clemens said his father realised when he started taking his cine films of steam railways that if he did not do it then there would be nothing for him to capture on film very soon.

"He could never have thought that more than 40 years on there would be such great interest in his hobby," Mr Clemens said.

Another of his steal railway videos has been released by Mr Clemens, and it is also the first one on DVD. Steam Railways in Central Wales in the 10th in a series of about 25 videos planned in the next 10 years taken from the many miles of mainly 8mm cine film of long closed railways and the locomotives that worked over them.

The Video/DVD is all archive material, mostly taken between 1960 and 1966. The majority is filmed in colour and an informative commentary plus authentic soundtrack of the locomotives featured back it. An hour long, the Video/CVD costs £19.99 from 01386 552069 (shop hours) by credit card, or by sending a cheque to Wireless Supply Ltd., 12 High Street, Pershore, WR10 1BG.

Mr Clemens is already working on his next video/DVD which will be a local one covering the Worcester, Pershore and Evesham areas.