Here we are at Combwich on the hottest afternoon of the summer of 1959, and the little tank engine unofficially borrowed from Shrewsbury shed refuses to move another inch until someone finds the station cat, which is just one of Bob Geeza Cat’s many roles.
“He were here this morning,” declares Driver Wilkins, wiping soot from his brow. “Sat on the coal bunker like Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”
Nobody questions this, for Bob Geeza effectively runs the railway.
The stationmaster searches the parcels van. The porter searches the waiting room. Old Ernie searches inside a milk churn for reasons nobody fully understands.
Meanwhile, the locomotive simmers impatiently beside the platform, puffing little sighs of smoke into the enormous cotton-wool clouds drifting above the Levels. A dachshund named Cecil barks furiously at a suspicious clump of grass near the rails, convinced it is either a hedgehog or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Then comes the strange sound.
“Banjo music,” whispers the fireman.
Sure enough, faint banjo playing drifts across the yard from somewhere beyond the distant lorry.
The railwaymen follow the tune and discover Bob Geeza Cat balancing on top of a shiny rail while an elderly traveller plays banjo just out of shot to the right.
“Well,” sighs the stationmaster, “that explains the delay.”
Nobody asks how.
Bob is returned to the engine with full honours, the banjo player is given tea and two custard creams, and at precisely three twenty-seven the little train finally departs for Highbridge at the magnificent speed of almost eleven miles an hour.
Cecil continues barking at the grass for another forty minutes.
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