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Trains in general, and steam trains in particular have always fascinated me. Some of my most vivid memories of steam trains are as a young child visiting with friends of my parents who lived across from the GNR railway station in Derry. I used to spend hours at one of their upstairs windows watching the movement of the trains in and out of the station and in the freight yards. Of course back then all the motive power was steam. I still like to watch steam trains whenever the opportunity arises, which is not very often these days, unfortunately. I also like model railways, but have never had the time nor the space (and probably not the patience) to develop a layout of my own. So I have to be content with a Hornby (OO gauge) model of a British Railways steam engine "Morning Star" which sits in a display case in my house. This model was almost a casualty of the Los Angeles earthquake in 1994, the display case fell to the ground and suffered some minor breakage but fortunately the engine escaped unscathed. During my vacation in 1998, as well as frequent trips on the London Underground trains, I was able to ride all the rails of the Docklands Light Railway in London, but the highlight was a trip on the Eurostar. The Eurostar is the high speed train (186MPH at full speed) that runs from London to Paris using the Channel Tunnel. It was a great trip, but sadly we only had time to spend one day in Paris before returning to London.
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