The story

Edie Ramsden keeps the gates where the road to Cawdale crosses the Kellbeck branch, nine miles of single track running up a Pennine dale to a market town and a stone quarry. Her husband Tom is the ganger on the line and a Territorial. On 1 September 1939 his battalion is called up and he is gone; the same week, two evacuees arrive at the cottage with labels on their coats, and the railway company makes Edie the crossing keeper in her own name.

She writes to him. Through the blackout, the coldest winter in living memory, the trains that were never on any timetable, and the years when his letters can only be two sides of paper, she writes. Twelve letters, four series, one story.

Four series

• The Gates Close (autumn 1939 to winter 1940)
• The Gates Open for the Army (1940 to 1941)
• Is Your Journey Really Necessary? (1942 to 1943)
• The Lights Come Back (1944 to 1945)

What is real

Edie, Tom, the Kellbeck branch and its stations are invented. Everything around them is real: the government’s control of the railways from 1 September 1939, the 3,823 evacuation trains, the blackout, the frost of 1940, the Dunkirk trains, the women who took over the signal boxes, the Austerity engines, the lines cleared for D-Day. Every month’s history note tells you what really happened, and the members’ archive shows where we found it. If we get something wrong, we say so in the next envelope.

Who writes it

[One paragraph about you: who you are, why railways, why letters. In your own words; the brand is honest about being small.]