"But if so, why do you see so many young children on steam trains - apart, that is, from being dragged along by their fathers, or grandfathers?

"I think they enjoy them because they are simply so different, so mechanical, so hot, oily and clanky, so dirty, so 'analogue' in a digital world. They are everything modern life tries to extirpate in favour of silence, smoothness and cleanness. Kids love that.