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Seeing a huge engine like Eddystone pulling half a dozen or so coaches along six miles of near level track at a maximum speed of twenty-five miles a hour
make me wonder what Wilbert Awdry's Gordon the Big Engine would have to say in similar circumstances.
Perhaps we need to start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dumb Steam Engines!
A nice surprise, however, was finding Secundus hiding in Corfe Castle Goods Shed.
Dating from 1874, this is the last survivor of seven engines, named Primus through to Septimus,
that used to work the 2ft 8½in gauge Pike's Tramway
from the clay mines around Furzebrook to the River Frome at Ridge Wharf.
After the railway closed in 1955, Secundus returned Birmingham where it was originally built,
and was on display in the Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry until that closed in 1997.
