A maroon Hindustan Ambassador sparkles in the glorious summer sun in front of the picturesque Heyford railway station in north Oxfordshire. While bumping into Indians at every corner in the UK is quite usual, having the good old bulbous Indian car waiting at a quaint station by the Oxford Canal comes as a pleasant surprise. The surprise lasts till you meet its owner, Adrian Shooter, the former chairman of Chiltern Railways, a British train operating company.
Fifteen years ago, Shooter bought an “arts and crafts” style house in Steeple Aston village, shipped in a Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) steam locomotive and set up his own private railway—the Beeches Light Railway—in his three-acre garden. The 1889 British-built steam engine, used in the Darjeeling hills in India till 1962, was bought from a private collector in Chicago.
The Ambassador is a fancy of the man in love with all machines old.
Anuradha Sharma 