Stoker

Spoilt for choice today. Beautiful journey from Kingswear to Goodrington Bay and back on the Dartmouth Steam Railway. The front at Goodrington is lined with that photographic cliche, the beach hut. And yes, I did snap them, and the beach, the waves, not to forget the engine, named Hercules - no surprise there given Agatha Christie lived at Greenway, a short distance up the Dart.

But it was these characters I found most interesting. The one in the cap had just shovelled loads of coal into the boiler, the other pulled the whistle string, and off they went to Paignton.

Now there is a station in Dartmouth, but Brunel got rather ahead of himself. He applied for retrospective planning permission, which was denied despite the town's naval significance and the training college, still in use. Kingswear is on the east side of the Dart estuary and that's as far as trains go - though only this steam service.