had helped Richard Trevithick design his early steam engines, which I considered poignant and afforadble at 6). The signatures were almost identical, although in the second the W was slightly more slanted. The envelope was stamped with Huskisson's red wax seal, which featured an elephant's head on top of a shield and the motto secura quies, short for At secura quies, et nescia fallere vita, which works out as 'But quiet slumbers and a life innocent of deceit'. One item I bought and enjoyed made me think I was indeed turning into an obsessive, or an expert, or both. An LP entitled Trains In the Night, on the Argo label, was pressed up in 1962 after a man named Peter Handford went out with a reel-to-reel tape-recorder to the Lickey Incline at Bromsgrove, and set his ear to the wind. His sleeve notes indicate what he got. As well as Lickey he also went to Steele Road Station on the Carlisle-Hawick-Edinburgh line, and at dawn one day a V2 engine, number 60927, 'crosses the small road bridge, staggers slightly in an effort to keep a grip on the rails, then slips violently, belching steam and smoke, but with expert handling recovers and pulls strongly, if slightly more slowly, away, taking the heavy train round the curve towards Riccarton as the echoes of the exhaust beat mingle with the sounds of the early morning birds.' George and Robert Stephenson and their friends unleashed this dramatic and handsome world on us, and