It is 5.20am, and I’m sound asleep in a guest house in Wolsztyn, a small town in western Poland. The light snaps on outside my room. I hear Howard Jones, my host, shout: “It’s working! It’s working!”. It takes me a second to register what’s happening, then I leap from my bed and quickly dress.
Thirty minutes later, Jones and I reach the train station. It is cold, dark and raining, but sure enough there’s a huge black steam engine standing at the platform with smoke billowing from its chimney.
We climb up into the cab, where Andrzej and Marcin, the driver and fireman (or engine stoker) are waiting in their grimy clothes and baseball caps. At precisely 6.03am, the great steel monster pulls out of the station, clanking and creaking, huffing and puffing as it slowly gathers pace.
Thus, the world’s last scheduled standard-gauge steam-train service, the last one primarily for regular passengers, not tourists, begins its morning journey.
