The Anglesey train station frozen in time that's now up for auction

Once, you'd have had no trouble finding Pentre Berw station. You'd just follow the smoke of the steam engine and the noise of the whistle.

But nothing's whistled - or smouldered away in the platform there - for decades.

In fact, down a north Anglesey lane that feels like you might be slightly trespassing, you suddenly come to a long, low red and white brick building that hasn't seen a single passenger for maybe 70 years.

On the walls are old tin signs for products that, if they still exist, use the internet to advertise these days.

A porter's trolley, wheels slightly rusted. Old station lamps which are now hotels for insects.

The railway track's still there, remarkably intact, but a whole world of wild flowers and the odd bramble have claimed the sleepers for themselves.

Just over a week from now, this place goes under the auctioneer's hammer.

Guide price, £35,000-40,000 - and then you'll need to ask for planning permission if you fancy a quirky but elegant home, and the phone numbers of several good builders.

But if those are the drawbacks - well, you do get several waiting rooms with wooden shelves and elegant fireplaces, solid brick walls, elegant windows, long benches and - one thing that's very hard to recreate on telly - a unique and evocative scent, a combination of lamp oil and grass cuttings and time.

Melfyn Williams, who will auction Pentre Berw's station off next week, tells us you never quite know what'll happen once a lot comes up - but it isn't actually the first railway station he has sold in his career.

As we wander from waiting room to waiting room - still in the old London and North Western Railway colours - it doesn't take much to imagine what this place was like when the smoke and the steam and the passengers were here.

So, all those fireplaces - marble in the waiting room, cast iron in the staff bit - might find themselves a new flame: whoever buys this is buying an atmosphere you can't entirely get from just seeing the catalogue or the pictures.

It's a perfect time capsule, a place where the trains stopped running but the scent of the past still finds you - a passenger on an empty platform, where your imagination takes a journey instead.

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