I wrote yesterday about my uncle and I's guitar playing. In addition to this hobby my uncle also has a model railway. When I saw this for my first time during my childhood I wanted my own and sure enough I got into the hobby. First I received a kit for Christmas and set it up on my bedroom floor, but soon the engine suffered from the carpet and this lead my dad to construct a proper baseboard in my bedroom while I was away one time. I got into the hobby somewhat; I built some kits, including a station and bought and laid some more track, but I lost my momentum with it, plus it was an expensive thing only having a small amount of pocket money or a part time job later. Eventually I sold everything and got into radio controlled cars instead...

Fast forward some years and once I got my own home I decided my spare room would be ideal for a model railway and I progressed with it at first, but again I lost my momentum. The baseboards are still there but I ended up hoarding too many computers which took over, plus the expense can also be difficult to justify.

Anyway, back in my uncle's loft we 'played some more trains' just like we had done the first time. It was great fun; my uncle would send a train through to my area and give me the challenge of shunting things around to leave different wagons in the yard and take others on to the other station. These could be quite a puzzle!

We chatted about his model railway and in response to one of my questions about how it all worked he gave me a history lesson on how the whole thing had developed; parts of it had come from the layouts of people who had passed away - he'd visited a couple of widows and helped them to find new homes for their late husband's hobbies.

Now, while I was staying with my aunty and uncle I had a phone call from one of my clients who arranged with me to visit her upon my return home. From this phone call I got the impression that her husband had passed away since I last visited them, although I didn't want to overly assume this. Sure enough, when I arrived she explained this to me. The relevance to the model railway story is that her husband was into railways too and I'd seen his model one time. So here was me, somewhat synchronistically (and sympathetically) talking with her about what she was planning to do with this model railway and she suggested I contact her in the new year to visit again to look things over. I'd even had a dream the night before all about the visit and the conversation I might have. For me this all feels like a great nudge for me to get on with my model railway. I am a great believer in things 'falling into place' like this (although things could of course still turn out differently), but I think if you're 'destined' to have something it will find you - although this doesn't mean you shouldn't take action, quite the contrary; when the universe speaks, you should act. Occasionally I have tried to force things, like the times I have gone out of my way to buy something only to then be given one.

Anyway, for now I have used my video footage from the drive I did (see Day 13); there is a part where I pulled over and panned my camera around. I took some stills from that and used a panoramic tool to stitch them all together, and I then cut it up and printed out the pieces to then stick back together to use as a backscene: