HE crewed some of the greatest steam engines like the Flying Scotsman and had a rare skill which saw him fix the same engine and some iconic pieces of Gwent's industrial heritage. Martin Wade tells the story of Newport engineer Jeff Jones.

Jeff Jones is a child of industrial Britain. Born in 1927, as a 14-year-old, he went to work at his local colliery in at Staveley in Derbyshire.

Four years later he left work underground to take up a job at the railway depot in the same town. By 1945, steam was still king on British railways and these magnificent snorting beasts were what kept the country moving. And for them to keep moving they must have coal. This was Jeff's job.

The fireman's job was to make sure a steady supply of steam was reaching the engine. Depending on the size of the load being pulled, the engines steam demand would vary, and a fireman was expected to predict how much steam would be needed miles ahead and adjust the fire to produce more or less steam. He also had to keep shovelling coal in to the burner - a hard, repetitive physical task.

In his time, he stood on the footplate of the Flying Scotsman, perhaps Britain's most famous engine. It was the first steam engine to reach 100mph and has been described as the world's most famous steam locomotive. It still runs today.

In his time as a fireman, he also worked on its fastest - the Mallard. This futuristic-looking streamlined engine reached 125.88 mph, a record which still stands. These giants were seen as among the greatest achievements of British engineering. Their designers were feted like the celebrities of today.

Jeff was part of a relief crew and would be called to 'rescue' engines when their own crews had driven longer than was safe for them to work on.

He first encountered the Flying Scotsman in sadder times than her heyday. When he got the call one day in 1947 he saw her no longer pulling glamorous passenger express trains, but hauling coal in Nottinghamshire.

With his partner, driver Jack Chapman, they duly took the famous engine home. Between them they would make the trains go, sometimes swapping roles.

Despite the glamour that surrounds the footplate, the crew of a steam engine were faced with hard, physical work, exposed to the elements and the smoke, steam and dust their charges spewed out at them.

Jeff recalls travelling from Manchester through the Woodhead tunnel. The longest in Britain, he remembers how they would have to kneel in the engine cab with head bowed to avoid the smoke and dust being blown back as they powered through the 4 1/2 mile tunnel.

He remembers the Flying Scotsman as a delight to crew. "Some engines you had to work very hard to keep the fire up. In a poor engine you'd have to rake the fire constantly, but the Scotsman was so well-designed you didn't have to. It was good engine."

After working on the footplate, in 1956 he began work at his brother-in-law’s company, Casting Repairs, which specialised in fixing cast iron. There he learnt a rare skill which would see him work with icons of the industrial era.

Metal stitching describes a method of repairing cracks in cast metals without welding. Unlike steel and aluminium, cast iron cannot be welded easily because it is relatively brittle and can be damaged by heat. Holes are drilled through and around the crack in the cast iron and these are filled with small pieces of metal. This is repeated giving a pattern like stitching across the affected area.

Because it can be done quickly it can be used in emergencies and avoids expensive castings having to be replaced.

Just a year after leaving the footplate and the world of steam, he was reunited with one its most famous models when he was called to Doncaster one evening to repair a locomotive.

The stricken engine was none other than the Flying Scotsman. Now nearing the end of her working life, one of her cylinders had fractured and Jeff was called as one those who could stitch it back together.

At this time there were few people who had this skill, but there was still enough cast iron being used for people to make a living repairing it. In the early sixties Gwent was still an overwhelmingly industrial place. Collieries, railways, steel and engineering dominated the landscape and kept the local economy moving.

In 1963 Jeff was asked to take over the firm's growing South Wales operation. Soon after he travelled to Newport to find somewhere to live and looked at a house on Newbury Lane. He took over premises on London Street and started work the next day.

By 1973, with his partner Ken Gough, he built premises called ‘Brunel Works’ on Coomassie Street for their new firm ‘MFP Stitchweld’ with 13 men working there.

They were busy times. Much trade came from Newport's many metal works. "We would often have to fix lathes at the Spencer steelworks in Llanwern and at Alcan in Rogerstone" Jeff remembers. Like an engineering emergency service, Jeff would arrive with his tools "like a doctor" and get to work, as he had done on the Flying Scotsman.

Less glamorous than the famous steam engine, but no less vital, were repairs he had to do one winter in the 1970s. "Newport Bus decided not to use anti-freeze and 26 of their buses' engines fractured." he remembers with a chuckle, adding "I had to fix them all."

Through the seventies and eighties, Britain's industrial base began to shrink and whatever cast iron was about was as likely to be brought to the cutter's torch as for repair. The works on Coomassie Street was closed in 1984. Jeff placed the firm in voluntary liquidation and as he says: "Work just dropped away. We paid everybody off and I was left with 'bugger all'" he recalls. "It felt horrible" he says.

Jeff's story is one of a bygone industrial age, when machinery was heavy and the air was filled with smoke and steam. But there is one place where a sense of the era can be recalled. Now leafy and pleasant with fires and fumes long-gone, Blaenavon's Ironworks are recognised around the world for its importance as a cradle of industrial metal working.

To the side of the car park where coaches unload visitors for the ironworks stands a great steam hammer. It is still now but in its day it could shape a piece of red hot metal by bringing tons of pressure slamming down on it. The seven-ton hammer will always be special to Jeff because he was called to fix it 60 years ago. "I had to fix a fracture on the bottom of the hammer - you can still see it after all these years."

The 88-year-old says he feels pride that his repair kept the hammer going to the end of its working life. "It'll be there for ever", he adds with the satisfaction of someone whose legacy, shaped in metal, will live on.