Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on April 30, 2006 at 07:33:18 from 80.3.128.6 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: Re: Susan taking charge posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on April 28, 2006 at 11:10:45:
To be a bit pedantic!
I don't think the engine would actually have run round the train at Norwich Thorpe.
The train (identified in 'Arthur Ransome's Railways' as the 10 03 from London Liverpool Street to Cromer) would have been brought from London by an express tender locomotive. If the engine had run around the train it would have had to go tender first for the remaining 30 miles or so to Cromer. It is far more likely that a fresh engine pointing the right way would have been coupled on at Thorpe, allowing the London engine and crew to go to the sheds for a well earned rest after the train had left.
In the days when there were plenty of locomotives this would have been operationally more effective anyway, and potentially much faster. In the Railway Races to Aberdeen in 1895 some companies got this sort of locomotive change down literally to seconds.
None of which would have made coupling the new engine onto the train any the less interesting for Dick. It is something I still always watch on the rare occasions when I am in a train which has an engine at all.