THE time has come for all of us to come out of the closet.

Everybody in Swindon should understand that it’s safe – and even healthy – to confess their passions. We will all feel better for it, once we have got it off our chests and let everybody know our deepest feelings.

So I am going to be the first to admit it: I AM A TRAINSPOTTER.

I am not the most extreme kind, who stand on the end of station platforms, licking their pencils as they peer over their book of numbers, ticking them off.

Rather, I am the much more common trainspotter, who can’t look at a steam locomotive without feeling something stir, deep inside. So admit it: you feel like it too.

I know you do because I don’t believe it is humanly possible to feel unmoved when you stand next to one of those massive majestic metallic monsters – not if you have red blood running in their veins.

And for some of us in Swindon it is even worse because our blood type is GWR.

My father, father-in-law, both grandfathers, some great grandfathers and countless other ancestors all worked ‘inside’ – and by that I don’t mean that funny cousin who ended up sewing mail bags.

For those of you reading this who are not originally from Swindon and haven’t heard the term before, working ‘inside’ meant you had a job with the Great Western Railway in its Swindon Works.

But let’s not make the mistake of thinking you have to come from a railway family to be affected by steam trains.

I don’t even think it matters where you come from or how old you are or what age you were born into.

There is something instinctive about it, as if steam and rail have been around for millions of years and have been etched into our DNA by some primeval urge.

I believe even the ladies get a twinkle in their eyes at the sight of a shapely boiler. They just suppress it more than the men.

For some it isn’t so much the sight of a loco as the sound or even the smell of one that gets them going. One way or another, to some degree, it gets to us all in the end.

So my message to you is: don’t fight it.

We are all trainspotters at heart, so relax. You are among friends.

There is nothing shameful about it – because there can be no shame in admitting you are impressed by something that is so impressive.

And you might as well give in to it over the next year because of Swindon 175, a celebration of the 175 years that have now elapsed since Mr Brunel and Mr Gooch got together and decided to build a railway town here.

Swindon 175 will be officially launched this week and will last all next year – and I really hope it is a success.

By looking back at what this little town has achieved in all those years, it should inspire us to be more ambitious in the future.

If nothing else, remembering we live in a place that once built fantastic engines should make us demand higher standards from those who make decisions for us.

There has never been a better time to get in touch with your locomotive side than now, thanks to the homecoming of King George V and City of Truro, two of the greatest engines the world has ever seen, which are about to go on display alongside a platform at STEAM as part of the celebrations. So I repeat: come out of the closet.

Nobody should be in the closet when the train is in the station.

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