…In fact one of my few relatively clear memories of my grandfather are holding his hand while we stood on the (very crowded) footplate of the Oliver Cromwell, a BR Standard 7 Class locomotive, for a short run up and down the rails at Bressingham in the early 1980s. All I remember is a glimpse of the fire in the furnace, being closed in on all sides by people, and the huge, solid presence of my grandfather. I thought that was all I remembered, anyway, until I went on another preserved steam train many years later, and the sharp smell of the smoke, the sight of it curling down off the boiler to drift in ribbons past the window, was as familiar as if I’d been on steam trains my whole life.