Sometime the hating has to stop. — Eric Lomax

Some things that humans make transcend their function; instruments can be magical. That explosive, rhythmic sound we call says more to us about getting under way, about departure, than a can ever do; perhaps it has something close to the beat of our pulse. Even if we were using up and heating the earth too much, and no-one knew that at the time, it would have been worth making an exception for steam engines. They were beautiful machines; the most beautiful machines produced in the .

visited Thailand many times after that, and did charitable work for the surviving Asian labourers, many of whom were unable to return home to India or after the war and dragged out miserable lives in villages near the railway; and he opened a temple of peace on the , and spoke out against .

It all seemed admirable, but I read about these things with a surprising sense of detachment. I had expected to feel some more powerful emotion, but apart from the eerie feeling of being present at my own torture as an onlooker I felt empty. And I wondered at his feeling that he had been forgiven. God may have forgiven him, but I had not; mere human forgiveness is another matter.

burnt in a furnace surrounded by water created ; steam confined in a cylinder pushed a , and linked to wheels by rods that turned the straight thrust of the piston into rotatory motion, the moved and worked. The idea that hordes of people and commodities could be carried at such shockingly powerful speeds by a sort of articulated kettle, in which the water could never be allowed to fall below the top of the furnace or there would be an explosion, seemed amazing to me. What made it all so different from today's s, which run at set speeds, was the need to be aware at every moment of the perilous balance of fire and water, which also gave the possibility of going a little faster if the engineman was good, or of disaster if he was incompetent.