A MODEL train enthusiast who has had a 60-year-old love affair with the railways had a chance to ride with Britain’s biggest freight wagons.

Bob Clark climbed aboard a DB Cargo UK Class 66 locomotive at the Humber estuary's Port of Immingham on Wednesday morning, as it made its regular journey to deliver compressed wood pellets to Drax Power Station.

Bob had won the trip in a competition to mark the launch of two special edition Hornby models of the special biomass freight wagons, which were designed and made exclusively for Drax to carry the wood pellets from four ports in the north of England to the power station.

Bob, who remembers getting his first train set at the age of five, said: "My father worked for what was then British Rail, so I’ve had trains in my blood all my life."

He was met at Drax by Andy Koss, chief executive of Drax Power Ltd, who presented him with a special box set of the Hornby models.

Sales of the model wagons have so far raised over £8,000 for the Railway Benefit Fund.