I never saw steam on British Railways. My interest in railways only developed after a visit to the North Norfolk Railway, when aged 11, some six years after the last steam train had run through my home town. That first visit lingered in the memory. The smell, the taste of steam filled me with awe, I recall. Now 36, my interest was rekindled

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in 1994, when a chance meeting with the volunteer co-ordinator at the Nene Valley Railway led me to becoming a cleaner of a huge 2-10-0 Kreigsiok locomotive on a 'Santa Special'. It was special, too - cold enough to make brass monkeys unhappy, but wonderfully warm in the cab once the cleaning was completed. Half way through the day, the fireman handed me the shovel and said 'have a go' - after the first two shovel's full, he suggested I might want to place the coal inside the firebox, rather than over the footplate, which I got more successful at, and with that I was hooked!