IT took a lost hat for Clifford to ask Margaret on a date.

The pair, who both worked for British Rail, had already met at the now-defunct Wimborne railway station, and while Clifford was smitten at once, he couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask the object of his affections for an evening out.

However, when a friend threw his hat out of a train window, Clifford had to visit the lost property office manned by Margaret – and on Wednesday, the Brierley Road couple celebrated 70 years of marriage.

Mr and Mrs Bailey, now 92 and 90, celebrated their platinum anniversary with fish and chips washed down with a glass of champagne, which will be followed by a celebration with friends and family on Sunday.

“When we met, he was a fireman on the steam engines and I worked in the goods office,” said Mrs Bailey.

“I liked him straight away, but he didn’t ask me out until the driver threw his cap out of the window and he had to come and pick it up.”

The couple were married in 1943 at the parish church in Gainsborough, where Mrs Bailey grew up, and immediately moved in with Mr Bailey’s parents in Capstone Road, Bournemouth.

They have two sons, David and John, five grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

When grandson Paul was born, the family lived in Windham Road, Bournemouth, behind the railway.

Mrs Bailey passed on the good news to her husband, by that time a driver, by holding up a sign up in the back garden that proclaimed: “It’s a boy!”, which he spotted as he went past in the train.

Mrs Bailey said the secret to a long and happy marriage is “give and take”, and her husband says the key is telling her he loves her every day.

She added: “You have to listen to what your partner says.

“If you argue, always make up before you go to bed.”