My first visit to Spain, and my first holiday outside of the UK, was a family holiday to the Costa Brava resort of Lloret de Mar, in mid-80's.

I would have been about 7 or 8 at the time, and everything was a new experience, and provided some great memories; My first ever flight, from London Heathrow to Gerona (on an Iberia DC9 I think); A journey on a Spanish red bendy bus; The lovely sandy beaches; The unusual toilets with nothing but a hole in the ground... But what I do remember most were the trains. Mostly painted in a bright (in my mind) blue and yellow livery.

This first trip has turned into a facination for the country of Spain and more recently it's railways. I have returned to Spain a few times over the past 40 years and apart from my most recent trip, I regret having not taken very many railway photographs whilst there. Having searched around on the internet, it appears that Spanish railways, apart from those found on a few specialist websites, is a little photographed subject.

Therefore, I am very grateful that my father took a number of photographs on that very first holiday to Spain, and also on subsequent trips. Most of the photos have been scanned in from the original prints at 2400dpi, cleaned up in Photoshop and then reduced to 1600px landscape width for the internet, although the most recent ones were taken on a digital SLR.