1857

‘Are you serious?’ asked Dirk Sowerby, eyebrows aloft in disbelief.

‘Never more so,’ replied Caleb Andrews. ‘I’m starting to feel my age, Dirk. It’s time to think of retirement.’

‘But you’ve got more energy than the rest of us put together.’

Andrews laughed. ‘That’s not saying much.’

‘What does your daughter think of the idea?’

‘To be honest, it was Maddy’s suggestion. Now that she’s about to get married, she doesn’t need her old father to support her anymore. She feels that I’ve earned a rest.’

The two men were on the footplate of the locomotive they’d just brought into Wolverhampton station. The engine was still hissing and wheezing but at least they were now able to have a conversation without having to shout at each other. Andrews was not just one of the senior drivers on the London and North Western Railway, he was an institution, a grizzled veteran who’d dedicated himself to rail transport and achieved an almost iconic status among his work colleagues. He was a short, wiry man in his fifties with a wispy beard flecked with coal dust. Sowerby, by contrast, was tall, big-boned, potato-faced and well over twenty years younger. He idolised Andrews and — even though he sometimes felt the sharp edge of his friend’s tongue — was always glad to act as his fireman.

The LNWR train was on its way back to London but it did not have a monopoly on the route. As the two men chatted, a goods train belonging to the Great Western Railway steamed through the recently opened Low Level station nearby and left clouds of smoke in its wake. Andrews curled his lip in disgust.

‘We were here first,’ he declared. ‘Why does Wolverhampton have two stations? We can see to all of the town’s needs.’

‘Tell that to Mr Brunel.’