I am Leslie McAllister and I have been a lifelong railway enthusiast who travelled the World in pursuit of steam trains in the main. My first association with railways came from being held up (as a baby) to see trains leaving the little station of Richhill in County Armagh and the rest just seemed to follow!

A chance meeting at the 2007 Basingstoke Model Railway Exhibition with Martin Dean, the then proprietor of Wessex Wagons, set me on the rails. Martin gave me a lot of good advice, for which I am very grateful. I provided Dapol with my livery needs and they produced four different wagons for me to sell at the Warley exhibition that year and so Provincial Wagons was born.

Special commissions of British wagons in correct liveries for Irish railways got the ball rolling, but with the exception of my GNR(I) 1954 Bagged Cement Van (a very close cousin of the British Banana Vans) they were far from being scale models of Irish wagons.

Then I had the great good fortune of meeting Michael Rayner of Smallbrook Studio at another exhibition and a fruitful partnership has since seen us bring out kits of no less than 22 kits of wagons and 8 specialised loads to be carried on them.