IN his mind's eye he can see the locomotives rushing through the winter darkness, smell the steam and the sharp acrid smell of the burning coal.

"As well as recording things I have the ability to emotionally involve myself in the lives of the people I'm writing about," says Ralph Caple.

Such a degree of empathy is necessary in a novelist but is rare in those who write local history. Ralph Caple's book though, is not in the ordinary run of things. He has chronicled the lives of the railwaymen and some women working in the Sirhowy Valley from the 1800s until the present.

Ralph Caple, 60, lives and writes in his beloved Sirhowy Valley at Wattsville. After school he got an engineering apprenticeship, then worked at Whiteheads in Newport and at Llanwern, until finally he got a job with the part of British Rail that has since metamorphosed into Network Rail.

Ralph Caple's journey from dreamer to author was to have unexpected twists and dead ends, diversions and byways.

"My brother Christopher and I had a train set which fascinated me. When my son, Dene, asked for a lay-out I started to make a model of the railway system at the nearby Nine Mile Point, getting deeply involved in the railway's history.

"I quickly found that if you open one historical door others appear in front of you.