I CANNOT remember ever wanting to be an engine driver. I cannot remember ever being interested in engines. I can remember, as a very small child, being lifted up by a tall Scots godfather to look over a high wall to see "the puff-puffs" - and gazing at them with what must have been a very disconcerting lack of interest. I can also remember that near my home was a little wooden bridge. The engines always ejected fierce chuffs of steam as they hauled their trains out of the station and under it. The bridge was old and worn, and we used to stand with the backs of our legs pressed hard against the cracked wooden sides. Along came the train and the warm steam hissed through the cracks and shot up our trouser legs. That was a pleasant sensation and we never tired of it. But apart from that, engines and trains and drivers and firemen had no interest for me at all. I wasn't mechanically minded - the insides of engines bored me. Whenever I went on a train journey, I fell asleep. Altogether I grew up with a shocking ignorance of railways and the stock that ran on them.

  "Which," I said to myself in February, "is the reason I've been given the job of writing and producing a sixty minutes feature broadcast on railways." It takes a lot of words to fill sixty minutes, and a large amount of information can be packed into that time - must be, if the programme is to be interesting and useful. And I was rather appalled. However, a radio feature producer becomes used to trying to turn himself into an expert on any given subject in two or three weeks. That's all the time I had, so I packed my bags and set out to explore darkest railwayland. As I left, I gazed round at other producers about the place, hoping for a sign of sympathy. One or two looked at me rather vaguely, and rather vaguely muttered "puff-puff" or "chuff-chuff", and went on again with their work. They all get awkward jobs themselves. So I left London.

  For the next sixteen days my life became a mix-up of railway-lines, footplates, guards' vans, docks, floating cranes, refrigerating plant, sidings, offices, marshalling yards, loco-sheds and steadily increasing gloom. Very early in my wanderings I said to myself, "Railways are complicated things." And very soon the word "complicated" seldom left my lips. Complicated - complicated - how can I get all this on paper? Standing on the back of a freight train, in a rattling, jerking, open inspector's van, I listened (my face, I hope, showing intelligent interest, my heart, I fear, sinking into a blacker depression) to a quick-thinking, fluent-speaking railway inspector telling me about the track, the permanent way. There was more first-class programme material in one mile of track than I could get into half a dozen feature programmes. One mile of track . . . and I had to cover all the British railways. . . . The one consolation was that the Railways were being most efficient guides. And here and now I want to offer my sincere thanks to the officials who arranged my visits and who took me around, and to the men who talked to me at their jobs. They were all, to say the least, thoroughly co-operative, and they made my work easy and a pleasure.

  At the end of my "field-work" I had a very dirty suit, with several holes burnt in it, a dirtier overcoat, with holes in it, an oily hat, oilier gloves, worn-down shoes, and in my head an uneasy mass of information. But - among many other places - I had been to Crewe! What does Crewe mean to you? A music-hall gag? A horrible pause in a boring journey? Not so to me. At Crewe I was shown round by enthusiastic railwaymen. The Divisional Superintendent skilfully guided my thoughts out of chaos and told me very funny railway stories with the wit and poise of a skilled raconteur. The mass of facts in my head began to click into position - one or two, here and there. I began to think of pen and paper. I left Crewe - blessing it.

  I reached my desk with two main and very vivid impresssions. First, the complications - surprising and extremely interesting - of railway working. Second, a sincere admiration and respect for the way the British railways are tackling the gigantic task this war has given to them. Eventually, "Junction X" was written - a sketch only of the work done at the real "Junction X", a hint only of the work of the railways as a whole.

  Much of what I had seen could not be mentioned - and a great deal of information I had to discard. On the later score I offer my regrets to the railwaymen who at considerable bother gave me that knowledge. But - one sixty-minute programme doesn't tell listeners all that there is to know and enjoy about railways. I want one day to stand in that van again and listen while the hundred years of history that have gone into the making of those few miles of track are brought to life. . . . And I want one day to go back to Junction X. . . .

CECIL McGIVERN