I first became interested in the GC thanks to one book and two photos in that aforementioned book.

The book was JC Healy's "Echoes of the Great Central" and the two photos were, well, one was on the back cover and was Butler Henderson sitting at Rothley resplendent in GCR green and the other was Sir Sam Fay again in GCR livery at Annesley.

To an impressionable 12-year-old mind there isn't much difference between a Sam Fay and a B12/3, and I'm sure you can well imagine the response of my parents when I told them I wanted to turn my (then brand spanking new) Hornby model into 'that engine in the photograph'.

And so my wish to own a Sam Fay went unfulfilled. Fast forward 15 years and I've twice been right on the cusp of getting hold of one on Ebay, only to lose it in the last 5 seconds. I began to think if I wanted one, I'd have to build it myself from scratch, an endeavour I was put off from by my attempts to scratchbuild a Director- that dam' curved footplate being the very devil to form in plastic sheet.

So you can perhaps understand my elation tonight at winning, for a very reasonable price, a built whitemetal kit example off of that well-known internet auction site (along with an N5).

My plans for it, when it arrives, are, I don't know. If the current paint job pleases me I will most likely keep it in GCR livery as City of London- it will make a nice stablemate for my GC-liveried Butler Henderson. If, on the other hand, it needs a bit of TLC, I might repaint it into LNER livery as City of Lincoln (Lincoln being where I spent three very happy years as a student).

Either way I'm ecstatic tonight.