Credit to her generation: Stranger left young mother note and £5 for the way she taught her son manners on a train

        

A young mother is trying to track down a kind stranger who gave her £5 after she gave up her son's seat on a train so someone else could sit down.

Sammie Welch was travelling with her three-year-old son Rylan asleep on the seat next to her when a man boarded the crowded train.

She pulled her son onto her lap so the stranger could use the seat - and shortly afterwards another passenger slipped her a note calling her 'a credit to your generation'.

The mystery passenger, who signed the message 'Man on train at table with glasses and hat', also left the mother a £5 note to buy herself a drink.

The note, written in capital letters, read: 'Have a drink on me. You are a credit to your generation, polite and teaching the little boy good manners. Have a lovely evening.

'PS I have a daughter your age, someone did the same for her once. Hope when she has children she is as good a mother as you.'

Ms Welch, 23, who comes from Crewe but now lives in Plymouth, says she did not find out the stranger's name and has now launched a Facebook appeal to find him.

'I never had the chance to thank him as he got off and I couldn't move due to my son being asleep on me and a man sat next to me,' she wrote on the social networking site.

'I would love to have the opportunity to thank this man personally. He may not have Facebook but please please share this! I want to thank him for his kindness!'

She was travelling from Birmingham to Plymouth last Thursday with Rylan, trying to keep him entertained on the three-and-a-half-hour journey.

'He was eating his dinner, I had made him a packed lunch, and we were laughing at the fact he kept calling his grapes strawberries,' she said.

'He was just being a happy, laughing little boy. We were playing together and I was trying to keep him occupied.

'He normally gets quite rowdy and bored on long trains so I was doing my best to entertain him as much as I could.'

 

After finishing his dinner Rylan fell asleep, stretching across his mother's lap and the next seat - but Ms Welch, an unemployed IT technician, made him move for another passenger.

Soon afterwards, the unknown admirer walked past and handed Ms Welch the letter and cash before getting off the train straight away.

'When he handed it to me he said it had fallen out of my bag, so I just said thank you and took it from him,' she said.

'When I looked at it and saw what was written I was so shocked. I feel really overwhelmed by it all, it was just so lovely to get it.

'I've put the money in a savings account for Rylan now, I thought that was the best place for it.

When he described himself at the end of the note as the table across from me I was trying to rack my brains to see if I could remember him but there were that many faces on the train they all blur into one.

'I really, really wish I could remember him but I just can't. I'm trying to hard to recall the people and put things together but because he was getting off the train it all felt so rushed.

'I have no clue so I'm hoping people might be able to help me out. I wish I had looked at him in more detail, I really want to thank him personally.'

Are you the generous stranger? Email ollie.gillman@mailonline.co.uk or call 0203 615 0616