Folk song celebrates life-saver train driver

Dave and Charlotte Lay fell in love after he saved her life

Renowned folk singer Kate Rusby has written an "immense" love song dedicated to a train driver and the woman he saved after he found her ready to take her own life.

The ballad celebrates the couple's love story which began when Dave Lay spotted the woman - Charlotte, a nurse - on the tracks and stopped the train he was driving to get out and talk to her, convincing her to think again.

Dave and Charlotte went on to marry and the couple now live in Bradford with their five children.

Ms Rusby, from Penistone, said: "The song is about the coming together of two people in that incredible way."

Singer Kate Rusby said their story was "like a movie"

Charlotte, who said she had a long history of mental health struggles, was on her way to a night shift at work in 2019 when she decided to take her own life near a West Yorkshire train station.

"I had convinced myself it was the best thing to do," she said.

"Then I saw a train come round the corner, coming very slow and then stop... I thought 'this isn't how it was supposed to go'".

Dave was able to stop in time and he got out and sat with her.

"At this point I knew I needed to speak to this person and reason with them and try and make them aware... it's only up from here," he said.

Dave said he was able to stop the train in time and get out to talk to Charlotte

Dave talked to Charlotte for half an hour until she agreed to get on the train.

He dropped her at Skipton Station and she was taken to a police station before being reunited with her three-year-old son.

She said: "Dave introduced himself and could not have been more compassionate and asked if I was having a bad day.

"There was no judgment and he said we would sit here as long as it takes."

Charlotte added: "He broke the crisis for me and I got to go home to my little boy and make him breakfast the next day."

Three years later they married each other.

Ms Rusby, 51, said when she first heard Dave and Charlotte's story she was worried it was too big to turn into a song.

"There was immense pressure - I had never done such a thing to a timescale and then to perform to them [Dave and Charlotte]," she said.

She said the song started to come together for her when it dawned on her that the most important part of the song was the "human emotion".

Ms Rusby said she tried to "document Charlotte's journey" and tried to imagine her headspace when she sat on the train tracks.

"What did she hear? Her own heartbeat, the train?

"At the end it mentions their children and how important that link is and that 'love is just around that bend' - and it was, Dave was just about to come round that bend."

She added: "What a beautiful thing fate is sometimes."

Charlotte and Dave got married three years after meeting

The song is part of BBC Radio 2's folk week with songs inspired by train stories to celebrate 200 years of UK railways.

Dave and Charlotte listened to a live performance of the song - Light Beyond the Lines - with Ms Rusby's husband playing guitar.

Despite being an experienced singer and songwriter, she said she found it "really scary" to perform the song in front of the couple for the first time.

Afterwards Dave said: "The words from Kate were immense, they blew us away."

Charlotte added: "I was sold in the first few seconds. I wasn't expecting to feel so emotional about it.

"She captured everything."

Hear the songs and their stories in 21st Century Folk 2025 on BBC Sounds and watch performances by going to bbc.co.uk/folk.

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