So, as happens sometimes, life events and health took over and the posts I had planned had to be pushed onto the back burner, but hopefully now I will have some time to write again.

As I said in my previous post, three of the things that lead me to ideas for books are people, places and pictures. Previously, I have told you about some of the people and one of the places, so let me carry on from where I left off and tell you about another place behind the GWR Girls series.  

Number two on my list of places I have already mentioned, that is the STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon, which was opened in the millennium year, 2000. It is positioned in the former GWR workshops. As I said in my last post, I visited the museum quite a few times. I took my daughter when she was small, and, when I worked for Swindon Borough Council who own the museum, I used to run training sessions and hold and attend meetings in the rooms in the museum. What I love about the set up there, is that there are lots of spaces where scenes of working life are recreated, in life size models, a captured moment in time, and not only that there are sounds. The museum plays the sounds appropriate to the scenes. Which means as a writer I have the opportunity to think, how would I describe that. Then there are the personal descriptions from the people who worked there, describing what they experienced. Also items that hint at the life of the people who worked there—the checking in pegs, the glass framed foremen’s offices on their stilts in the corners of the spaces. I love the life-size platform that is set up for the 1940s era, and I like sitting in the carriages.  

Of course, for anyone with an engineering and technical brain there are plenty of actual trains to look around. But for me, with my overactive imagination, I just love the storytelling style of the museum. It has really brought things to life for me and many of the things I describe in my book I can only describe because I saw them in the museum.  

There are more things I could say about inspirations I have gained from this museum but that would give away parts of the plot!

I would definitely recommend a visit, though.