The Pumpkin Coach [antikvár]

Prologue Early in June 1910, the Honourable Richard Bracewell of the Great Western Railway came to visit the Forest of Dean network of private lines -bought by them piecemeal and often closed down immediately - with a view to housing an arsenal in the forest; an arsenal easily accessed by the myriad lines snaking through the trees. It wasn't a very serious investigation; after all, no one believed there would be a war - not when all the royal families of Europe were blood relations. But it was a day out riding trains, and the other members of the Board had had a wonderful time in Wales and Cornwall. Now he was going to do likewise. The Honourable - as he was known - was not disappointed. Two of the local station masters accompanied him and at one point he actually rode in the cab and blew the whistle. He was not without imagination, and could see how these small fingers of iron must have connected families as well as coal mines. The wood - English oak, no less - which, over millions of years, turned into coal, had been on hand for the sleepers, and there had been plenty of ballast dug out of the family-owned mines. The foresters could not have