A couple have recreated their 65-year-old wedding photo in which they waved at a passing train—something the bride did every day as a girl.
George and Margaret Stone celebrated their anniversary on Sept. 5 and marked it by continuing a tradition that goes back decades.
Margaret and her sister Janet spent their childhood waving at trains that passed their garden, with the drivers often tooting back. Margaret spent hours waving at the London to Penzance steam trains, which used to thunder past her home in Wiltshire, in South West England.
So much so that even on her wedding day, on Sept. 5, 1959, Margaret and her then-new husband, George, didn’t miss waving at the train from the family farm in Easterton, near Devizes. Margaret and her sister even made a wedding cake, which was shared by 300 employees of the Western Region of British Railways.
Celebrating their 65th anniversary this year, the couple recreated the special photo that was taken on their wedding day.
They were also presented with a special wedding cake from Great Western Railway (GWR)—to return the kind-hearted gesture Margaret made back in 1959, on the eve of her wedding.
“It was just one of those lovely things my mum did,” the couple’s eldest daughter, Annette, said, adding that her mother used to run to the garden as a child to wave at the moving trains, and the drivers “always tooted back.”
Margaret’s grandfather was the station master at Saltash train station and his brother was the station master at Perranwell.
“She spent her childhood waving at the trains,” Annette said, “and it’s charming to see how she developed such a bond with the drivers and firemen. Sixty-five years of marriage is something truly special to celebrate.”
The happy couple moved to Cornwall after their wedding. Following stints farming and running a bed-and-breakfast, they took over Payne’s Picnic Garden in Carbis Bay, which they developed into the Cottage Hotel. After 25 years, they moved on to run Beck’s Fish and Chips, a traditional British fast-food restaurant favored by locals and tourists since 1989.
GWR Head of External Communications Dan Panes said: “This story really has captured our hearts the more we have researched it.
“Margaret was obviously a real train fanatic as a young girl and built up quite a rapport with the drivers, who would sound the train whistles as they rolled by. It’s like something out of ‘The Railway Children.’
“The fact she baked a wedding cake for railway colleagues was a wonderful gesture, so we were determined to mark their 65th wedding anniversary by returning the favor.”
The couple, who now live in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, have six children—Annette, Nicola, Richard, Robert, Sarah, and Rachel—and 18 grandchildren, with a great-grandchild due to arrive next year.
