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So Anne, impeded by giggles, read to the end of that moral work and then went down to the station. In her anxiety to miss nothing of the treat she arrived a quarter of an hour too early, so she went up the stairs onto the footbridge and had a good look up and down the line, which here runs in a dead straight line through a cutting for two miles in the Silverbridge direction, finally vanishing into a tunnel, and is often used for testing engines. In the far distance a puff of dirty smoke appeared, followed at a short interval by a distant rumble, and a very long goods train came out of the tunnel and clanked towards her. There is to all ages a fearful fascination in standing on a bridge while a train goes under it. The poor quality of war-time coal has considerably lessened this attraction for those of riper years, but to Anne the sulphurous stench, the choking thick smoke were still romantic. Just as the engine was nearly under her, a voice remarked:

"Rum, how those Yank engines keep all their machinery outside, like Puffing Billy."