Edinburgh and London (My Travels)
... the key event of the day, i.e. dinner with a young lady and her mate - the ‘English supporters’ of my site, as I call them, sometimes - in an elegant restaurant in the hotel premises.
August 9th
My hosts have organized a riveting tour to a once-famous
railway facility in the south-western part of England, in Didcot. It isn’t too far from our location in London - a little more than one hour by car - and we’re meeting with the mate’s family, who were told about my model railroading hobby and want to show me what ‘real’ trains are.
I knew very little about British railways before today, and this visit is really full of discoveries. The site was an important shed facility when railways in this part of England were managed by Great Western Railway. Later, when GWR too was nationalized and merged into UK railways, this shed became redundant (trains had switched from steam to diesel power), but they were able to save it as a sort of live museum, turning it into the Didcot Railway Centre, since 1967 managed by the Great Western Society. ...
