"Under a week..."

...until Tale of the Unnamed Engine goes on sale for the first time. I am very very excited, but also extremely nervous. Every writer is, when it has their name on it, and they've invested so much of their time, money, heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears into a publication; but there's something more at stake here.

The possibility of presenting an opportunity for something better, for a whole host of people.

A community which supports, and directly contributes to, something much larger than myself.

A grand vision, encompassing many peoples of different creeds, across the length and breadth of Great Britain, and across the seas to other countries such as the United States, where (perhaps surprisingly!) The British Railway Stories is more popular on YouTube.

I know that Dean and I have produced something really special here, and we'd like to keep on producing these books for as long as they wanted. There's so much good we can do through this medium, whether its moral lessons, learned for life, an instillment of a love of railway history, or just something which in later years, you can look back on fondly and say "that changed me".

Tale of the Unnamed Engine is a first step, that difficult first album, and its genesis has been drawn out, and its form changed many times. But the story at its heart, that of identity, and finding it, has never been lost from its pages, and I hope will resonate with many people for years to come.

Simon