Those were the days!
Sir: I am so sad, having read in Ian Jack's diary (5 August) that the last steam loco- motive in India is gone.
My father, William Anderson, was gener- al manager of the NW Railway until parti- tion, and I would sometimes go with him on his tours of inspection up the Khyber and to Quetta with its link to Afghanistan. The huge locomotives took six hours to get up steam and were thrilling to me — even as a girl. Some trips across towards Persia had us sitting on a bench fixed above the cow- catchers and buffers, out in the open. It was very sooty going through tunnels!
His white GM's carriage was very splen- did with a drawing-room as well as bed- rooms, bathrooms and servants' quarters with a kitchen. My husband and I were lent it for a very quick 'honeymoon' during the war: it was hitched to the mail train from Rawalpindi to Peshawar, left there while we disported ourselves in the Peshawar Club, and brought back the next day on the down train. Oh, what memories!
Peggy Lloyd -Bostock
3 Gore Street, London SW7 'Morning, Vicar. . .
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