An island to remember…

Arriving over the water to Ryde, both the train and I. Watching it race towards me over spindly iron work as the rails sang the same song as my heart, I welled up. A feeling not of sadness, but purely my passion for railways expressed in a physical moment, a magical location, an almost timeless moment…The smart train is older than me by a year or two, but having had a ‘mid life’ rebuild by the now defunct Vivarail, her and four sisters call the island home. Shorter carriages than even a 150 at 60ft (vs 64ft) make her visibly ‘cute’ and my singing heart verbalises a feeling to my good friend Steve…“I need to model this train”.This sudden revelation and the excitement and energy that came with it surprises me… I didn’t expect to feel this way about the island, a place I am visiting for the first time. It’s toothpaste liveried tube trains and 03 might be etched in my memory from childhood Ian Allan albums but this feeling feels visceral, too big to even contain in a sketch or track…