The longer this thread goes on, the more I realise a bit uncomfortably that re this particular kind of nonsense, Ive in fact never put away childish things. ("With head", we recognise, "this stuff is benign, and there's nothing wrong with it" -- "with gut", we sometimes feel otherwise.) Seems that it has a bit of a comfort blanket property for me when things gets tough and real-life fellow-humans (whoever may be actually at fault here) seem to hinder more than help there I go again. My latest episode of this kind was some dozen years ago, in the course of a personally bad time.
Inspired originally by the late-1960s (before end of BR steam) Railway World April Fool feature about the imaginary but well-known Eastern European nation of Ruritania premise, the way many earnest but photographically-untalented railway enthusiasts, made and circulated, badly-executed pictures of steam on BR: detractors of which rather unkindly commented: from looking at these pics, they might as well have been taken in Ruritania. Whence a RW extravaganza of bad, blurry, from-too-far-off British steam pictures, supposedly taken in Ruritania with fantasy stuff about said country being in Eastern Europe, taken to be as per the 1960s, a Soviet satellite Peoples Republic, with all that that implied. Caption-play was had, with reversing British place-names to seem East-European: Detsroh Senyek; Yrubnus; and a train heading toward the border at Elsilrac, photographed in the Girnalmurd Gorge.
Many readers caught on and joined in the fun, with letters to the magazine in the same spirit, for several issues thereafter; plus, a few humour-challenged readers writing in, to the effect of what is this rubbish all about?.
Decades later, I kind-of latched on to my memories of this stuff; plus bringing in the original Ruritania, from the late-nineteenth-century thriller-type novels by Anthony Hope The Prisoner of Zenda et al about high-society-and-royalty romance / skulduggery-type doings, in that romantically fictional Eastern European country. My Ruritania created for my purposes (and quite detailed-ly mapped) involved abolishing and annexing most of the Czech Republic, plus borrowing some bits from some neighbouring countries (Slovakia left mostly inviolate sorry, Czechs). Railway map within envisaged Ruritania was adjusted vis-a-vis reality , as seen appropriate.
Much pseudo-history dreamed up; but not wanting to get too boring, I see cutting to the railway-type chase: I saw Ruritania as a basically loser country, with its folks generally peaceable / dreamy / frivolous / lazy / not-active-aggressive; but with a tendency to being stubborn and passive-aggressive, and to being contrary to prevailing trends. Including which, the Peoples Republics government and its state-railways administration being 1960-ish on, re steam on its railways, like real-world Poland but even more so: to hell with keeping up with the modern Joneses traction-wise we have plenty of coal on our territory, we have a splendid fleet of mostly modern steam locos (including like most Soviet satellite nations lots of ex-German-Class 52 Kriegsloks, well-built machines in fine shape) why get rid of them in a hurry !? I saw Ruritania as reluctantly accepting some dieselisation, forced by general Eastern Bloc policy (although à la the Great Northern Railway of Ireland -- having from way back seen the sense of, and been accepting of, internal-combustion railcars for local passenger); but resisting and subverting to the max poss., diesel-loco-infliction -- and championing steam. And electrification: suburban commuter routes around the capital, yes: otherwise, forget it.
Including same post- end of Communism with Ruritanias being a contrary sort of place, reckoning attitude of, sod the worlds overall trends well go our own way: thus, enthusiastically hanging on to steam. Also, insisting on keeping going even now in 2016, the as at 1990 national-spanning network, including both for freight and passenger, rural local lines standard and narrow gauge (happily flying in the face of economics). Im aware that this stuff is utterly unrealistic in the face of harsh modern politico-economic facts; but people are permitted wish-fulfilment dreams...
I went so far as to imagine a fiction-character self as would ideally dream self to be a Ruritanian middle-class lad born in late 1970s, exposed to everyday steam there and thus a railway-and-steam enthusiast from birth: his dropping out and going to work on the railways from age 15 as a loco cleaner, dreaming of becoming a steam fireman and thence a driver (thing done in reality in the past, by no very small number of drop-out guys). Have toyed with short stories (one indeed completed), written in persona of this chap. Even had thoughts of setting up a website with self pretending (no duplicity openly admitting that it was fantasy and fun) to be my fictional character whereon everything, discussed-and-explored about Ruritania and its railways, past and present going into as much mad detail, as people were willing to play along with. (Hey, wish-fulfilment fantasies as against real-world dreary realities, are accepted by some as good for the soul and theres even weirder stuff out there on the Net, than the abovementioned imagined site which I was too lazy actually to do anything about.)