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My fascination with both steam and railways could be an inbred/inblood thing (great granfather was an engineer who specialised in static steam engines) all my cousins are of the same mind, even though we have lived in different parts of the country all our lives.
We lived in a mining village and had the railway in close proximity where a few of us used to go to watch the shunting etc, and to make matters even better, one of my spotting mates who lived in the same street, his father was the loco driver at the local colliery. We often used to go to the colliery and either help fire the loco or drive it, under supervision of course, there wasn't much room in the cab of an NCB austerity saddle tank for 2 adults and 2 kids, but at least we had the rides and enjoyed every minute of it.
The village we lived in was between the LMS and LNER routes (Sheffield Rotherham and Doncaster) and we spent probably an equal amount of time spotting at all 3 locations. As we got older we moved further afield for the spotting, York, Carlisle, Crewe and Derby to name a few.
As we got even older we found out about beer and women and something had to give, unfortunately it was the railway, but it has never been far from my mind and in these last 20 years or so has been resurrected. I still go out with the camera and take shots of mainly infrastructure and wagons and the occasional loco, but modelling has become the "in thing" for me now, I can re-live my youth but in model form.
Alan
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Mines a single malt please  .
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