FULL STEAM AHEAD!

I GOT THE CHANCE TO DRIVE THE WORLD'S LAST SCHEDULED STEAM TRAIN

- Martin Fletcher

It is 5:20 a.m., and I’m sound asleep in a guest house in Wolsztyn, a small town in western Poland. The light snaps on outside my room. I hear Howard Jones, my host, shout: “It’s working! It’s working!” It takes me a second to register what’s happening, then I leap from my bed and hurriedly dress.

Thirty minutes later, Jones and I reach the train station. It is cold, dark and raining, but sure enough there’s a huge black steam engine standing at the platform with clouds of steam and smoke billowing from its chimney.

We climb up into the cab, where Andrzej and Marcin, the driver and fireman (or engine stoker) are waiting in their grimy clothes and baseball caps. At precisely 6:03 a.m., the great steel monster pulls out of the station, clanking and creaking, shaking and shuddering, huffing and puffing as it slowly gathers pace.

Thus, the world’s last scheduled standard-gauge steam-train service, the last one primarily for regular passengers, not tourists, begins its morning journey.

It is also the last one on which novices like me can learn to drive. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that a friend of a friend, who was a steam-train lover, told me about Wolsztyn’s steam engines and of Howard Jones, the curious Englishman who had done so much to keep them going by setting up courses for those who longed to drive them.

Intrigued, I contacted Jones, who invited me to visit in February 2020. I booked my flights, but the day before my departure he called to say that none of the three trains were working. Then came Covid-19 and the lockdowns.