Every rail enthusiast – and trainspotter – has a story to tell.

It’s the story of how they first fell in love with locomotion.

For many I’ve met, it was seeing steam trains with all the romance, glamour, excitement and power they represent.

For others, it was their job: working on the railways when it provided an established career path and organised progression through the ranks.

For people of a certain generation, it was spending hours on cold stations collecting train numbers.

For me, none of those apply.

My personal interest began as a child.

I lived in London and my family did not own a car. We travelled to most places by bus – red London buses for journeys in the capital and green country buses for trips beyond the suburbs.

And that was my regular pattern of travel for most of the year.

But summer holidays were different. Summer holidays were at the seaside: Camber Sands in East Sussex or the Isle of Wight mostly. The only way to get there without a car was … by train.

I remember the excitement of taking a Tube from north London into the centre of London to one of the terminus stations and then a main line train out of the capital.

As the houses gave way to fields, I recall constantly asking “are we still in London?” The point at which the answers switched from “Yes” to “No” was the point at which the holiday truly began.

So I have always associated train travel with adventure and excitement, with journeys away from the normal routine and toward a change of scene, with leaving something behind and with arriving somewhere new.

I still retain that sense of adventure whether taking a regular train or when volunteering at the preserved steam railway in Sussex the Bluebell Railway.