Shap Wells

Builder: Graham Nicholas and friends Gauge & scale: 4mm:1ft scale, 16.5mm gauge ‘OO’ Size: 20ft long

It’s 1967 and a Ford Zephyr crammed to the gunnels with young railway photographers bounces down the road to Shap Wells. There’s no time to lose. Other photographers are there already. One enterprising young chap with a camera has claimed prime position on the roof of a permanent way hut. The men from the Zephyr, all members of an unofficial club called the Master Neverers Association, run up the embankment.

There’s a parcels train due, headed by a ‘Black Five’ and a ‘Britannia’, and you can tell both locomotives are struggling with the gruelling gradients on this stretch of the West Coast Main Line.

Closer it gets… and then click! The MNA can relax for the master shot is in the can. But their pause is fleeting. There are more locomotives out there, more photographs to take.