Only Gresley's 'A3s' and the InterCity 125s, both of which clocked up over 40 years of ECML service, can boast longer careers. But none were pushed as hard, for as long, as the Class 91s and Mk 4s have been over the past three decades.

One more, sir, then I'll have to stop serving you – rules of the house, I'm afraid.

It was not three months ago since, wild with joyful expectation, she had there run backwards and forwards some ten times a day, with an heart light, gay, and independent; looking forward to pleasures untasted and unalloyed, and free from the apprehension of evil as from the knowledge of it.

Achilles is a legend in Greek culture.