TRAIN driver Scott Chester's hobby is not exactly high-speed.

For Scott has clocked up almost 1,000 miles cycling around the countryside - so he can photograph himself sitting on tractors.

Two years ago, Scott moved to North Yorkshire from London to take up a job and instantly fell in love with the Dales.

In no time at all, he had settled into rural life and last year the Essex-born 42-year-old offered to help a farmer friend for two weeks during harvesting.

Scott, of Stillington, near York, loved the work and, after getting to grips with how to drive a tractor, had his picture taken with the tractor as a keepsake.

It then dawned on him that it would be an unusual way to raise funds for St Monica's Hospital in nearby Easingwold, North Yorkshire.

Six months on, the bachelor has an album crammed with almost 250 pictures of him alongside different tractors.

He is being sponsored by friends, family and farmers to collect as many snaps of different tractors in a year.

Already he has visited well over 100 farms in a 50-mile radius of his home so he can be snapped on machines he has not got in his prized collection.

Scott, a driver training manager with Arriva Trains Northern in York, said: "I live and breathe tractors and I'm always thinking of where I can find the next one to be pictured with.

"Farmers have been great. Word has got round what I'm doing and they are on the phone asking me to pay them a visit.

"By the time I've finished, I'll have one of the biggest collections of tractors in the country but it's a labour of love and it gets me out of the house."