TWO old Blackburn lads have met up again – after 75 years.

Back in 1939, Greville Machell and Ken Brooks were young classmates at Cedar Street School but after that they went their separate ways.

Recently, three-quarters of a century on, they met up in South Carolina, after they got back in contact via the internet.

They had chatted by email about old Blackburn, people and places and old steam locomotives, for a couple of years, before arranging a meeting.

After such a long gap, they did not recognise each other’s faces, but a long conversation soon brought back memories of school days, old friends and acquaintances and the Blackburn of yesteryear.

As a youngster, Greville lived in Providence Street, Little Harwood. He started school at Cedar Street when he was just 3½ years old, then went on to Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School.

He obtained a BSc from Blackburn Technical College and a PhD in chemistry from London University.

Greville was an avid train spotter as a youngster. Blackburn station and Daisyfield were favourite railway haunts for him at weekends and the railwaymen were so used to seeing him that he was invited to ride with them on the engines and go up into the signal boxes.

He emigrated to the USA in 1961 and had a very successful career as manager of a large textile company in South Carolina. When he retired his life-long interest in locomotives, especially steam engines, provided the incentive to build a mini-railway in his three-acre back yard, large enough to give rides to the local children.

When he was young, Ken lived in Oak Street, Bastwell. Born in Darwen, he attended Earcroft and Hollins Grove schools, before the family moved to Blackburn when he was seven.

He went to Cedar Street and Bangor Street schools and then Blackburn Technical College.

Ken was a keen member of Bangor Boys Youth Club, which was held in the old church in Troy Street.

Its table tennis team won the town league on several occasions and Ken claimed the individual champion of Blackburn adult league in 1953, beating Frank Hamer in the final at Grimshaw Park youth club.

After leaving school, Ken was an apprentice machine designer at British Northrop Loom before moving on to Mullards Simonstone, Foster Yates and Thom, and Leesona Holt in Darwen.

This grounding, plus his career in America after emigrating, eventually allowed him to open his own machine design and manufacturing plant in Charlotte, North Carolina.

His wife, Jeanne, nee Hodkinson, used to live in Warrington Street, the next street to Greville, so when they met they had many similar memories of the children, people and shops of Little Harwood.

When they were boys, Cedar Street was converted into an air raid warden and casualty centre during WWII.

The teachers and children were moved into the vacant vocational school in Whalley Range at the bottom of Troy Street and it was very crowded.

Their air raid shelters were in the foundations of the vacant church in Troy Street and the youngsters had air raid drills where they used to sit on forms wearing their gas masks in the dark and dusty vaults.