Letter: Little England's signal success

ONE OF my abiding memories is of visiting Bekonscot as a child ('Village of Little Englanders', Review, 26 June). I thought when I visited it recently, with my own children, that I was bound to be disappointed. I wasn't] The scenes and figures are frozen in pre-war time, it is true, but surely that makes the place unique and fascinating? It is unfair to blame Bekonscot for our insatiable love of nostalgia since it is a fortunate historical accident that the village remains at all, sited as it is

on valuable development land.

The railway system, one of the marvels of Bekonscot, is operated like a real railway from an adult-sized signal box. You wait for the trains to appear out of the tunnels and watch as they wind around the village, by the port where the ships are unloading, past the fairground, the coal mine, the steam roller laying tarmac . . . No, Mark Espiner, in your heart you are too old already]

Penny Parker

West Kirby, Wirral