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Ken, now 98, took part in the D-Day landings at Gold Beach as a Green Howards private.
Then, after the war, he worked at the Rowntree cocoa works in York – and it was there that he first came across the train that was eventually to be named after him.
Rowntree had its own miniature railway in those days, to carry to carry millions of boxes of chocolates and chocolate bars such as KitKat around the factory site.
Ken would often hitch a ride on one of the locomotives.
“It was a big factory, and whenever we had a job around the other side of the factory, we’d go up to the chap that drove the engine, and say ‘where are you going today?'” he said. “And then we used to jump on, to save ourselves walking through all the corridors.”
When, much later, he was taken to visit the Derwent Valley Light railway a few years ago, he immediately spotted one of the old engines he used to hitch a ride around the factory on.
It was the engine designated Ruston 441934. Built new for Rowntree in April 1960, it became known as Rowntree No.3.
After being deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ in 1987 it was passed to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway for preservation.
Then in 2013 it was acquired by two members of the Derwent Valley Light Railway (DVLR), Glynnis and Tony Frith, and returned to York.
The DVLR lovingly restored it – and, after he recognised it, decided to name it after Ken.
They invited him, all unsuspecting, to the unveiling – and asked him to pull back a draw cord to expose the engine’s name.
“I pulled the cord and there was my name on the side!” said Ken.
“I could have dropped through that platform!”
Now model train manufacturer Hornby has made a replica of the engine for Ken to keep at home.
And on Thursday, at the DVLR, the company officially presented him with a model of ‘his’ train.
The Normandy veteran was tickled pink.
“It is beautiful,” he said. “Hornby have done a marvellous job making it.”
In typical Ken Cooke style, however, he couldn’t resist making a joke.
He turned around to the assembled members of the DVLR and said: “Now how about swapping this for my own train?”
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