'Any idea where lost luggage is, mate?' I asked. 'down there, Chief,' he said.

But he was pointing to left

Luggage – the one on platform four.

'No,' I said. 'Lost… lost luggage.'

The lad took a step back, surprised.

'Lost luggage is out of the station, Chief' he said. 'Not too far, I hope,' I said, mindful of the teeming rain. 'Over yonder,' he said, putting his arm out straight in a south-easterly direction. 'Out the main exit and turn right.

What have you lost, Chief? I'll keep my eyes skinned.'

'Oh, nothing to speak of.'

'Right you are,' said the kid, who was now eyeing me as if I was crackers, so I said: 'Fact is, I'm down a quantity of Railway Magazines…brought 'em in on a train from Halifax, then left the buggers on the platform, I think.'

'Railway Magazines?' said the lad, 'Blimey! I should think you do want 'em back!'

Evidently the kid is a train-watcher, I decided, not just an employee of the railways, but keen on 'em too.

I nodded to him, then walked out of the station and turned right, going up Station Road, which went over the lines that had run into the old station, the trains proceeding through the arch that had been cut into the city walls. The building of those lines had been like a raid on the city made forty years since, but York was a tourist ground, an Illustrated Guide sort of place; jam-packed with the finest relics of old times. It had its looks to consider, and had fought back against the dirty iron monsters, with the upshot that the new station had been made to stand outside the city walls, with its fourteen platforms, its three hundred and fifty-odd trains a day, the great hotel with its two hundred rooms hard by.

From the highest part of Station Road, I looked at the miles of railway lines coming out of the station to north and south, spreading octopus-like. For a moment there in the rain blur, the scene looked just like a photograph, but then one goods engine out of dozens began crawling through the yard to the south, proving it was not. The engine rolled for ten seconds, then came to a stand. It had been like a move in a chess game, and now the rain came down and everybody on the