One of my Lockdown 3.0 guilty pleasures has been watching a DVD compilation of childhood programmes from the 1960s.

In particular, I have enjoyed going back in time to view episodes of Chigley, the third and final part of the ‘Trumptonshire Trilogy’.

And anyone of a certain age – or anyone who has ever watched the series – will be familiar with the song ‘Time flies by when I’m the driver of a train’.

What brought the song to mind this week was the news that there is to be a proper memorial to the steam train driver who set the speed record with ‘Mallard’.

As every trainspotter knows, ‘Mallard’ broke the speed record when it reached 126 mph on 3 July 1938 at Stoke Bank, south of Grantham. The locomotive was driven that day by Joseph Duddington with Thomas Bray as fireman.

Although their achievement has been acknowledged and the locomotive entered the record books, their personal story seems to be largely forgotten. The legend has built up around the engine and not the people at the controls that day.

There is a wonderful British Pathe film marking Joseph Duddington’s retirement in 1944. The campaign by his family is for a headstone memorial at his unmarked grave in a cemetery in Doncaster which is where the engine was built at LNER’s works.

So now there is publicity at last for the crew’s efforts in firing and driving a steam locomotive at that speed. The record marked an important point in the development of fast and efficient railways cutting journey times: that aim is still around today as projects such as HS2 and Crossrail demonstrate all too well.

The training, skill and experience involved in being a steam train driver are often forgotten. As anyone who has visited a heritage railway will have observed, there are still plenty of people still learning the knowledge of how to drive a steam engine and it remains an ambition and career path for thousands of volunteers and professionals across the country.

It takes many hours of both learning the theory and putting into practice the information gleaned to drive a steam locomotive safely under all conditions. One of the earliest books in this genre was Engine Driving Life by Michael Reynolds published at the end of the 19th century.

I love the full title including the words “stirring adventures and incidents in the lives of locomotive engine-drivers”. Now isn’t that every child’s dream?

Which reminds me of a story my Latin teacher used to tell. Teachers are often said to be “in loco parentis” which means “in the place of a parent” and describes their role when children are in school. However, he always used to joke that it meant “my Dad’s an engine driver”!

Is that the 6 o’clock whistle, I hear?