and I’m sitting inside 76 tons of heavily engineered steel. Drizzle falls on the platform of Loughborough Central station, and clouds of steam billow and drift like we’re in a 1940s weepie. But that doesn’t concern me right now, because I’m at the controls of steam locomotive No. 73156, squinting through rain-spattered glass at the bright red signal a hundred yards ahead and faintly terrified at what I’m about to do. Riding atop a huge mobile furnace filled with high-pressure steam does seem to concentrate the mind.
IT’S A GREY MORNING IN THE EAST MIDLANDS, The signal jerks upwards. “OK, just a bit” comes the voice behind me, and I tug at a lever. There’s a roar, the floor vibrates; a needle on a dial quivers. Gradually, deliberately, the world to each side starts to slide away. We’re moving, and it’s all my doing. I glance round at my supervisor for reassurance, and notice that he seems amused: possibly because — it now dawns on me — I’m grinning like an idiot.
