The jobs in the Mikado: the stoker

Toni, how are we doing for coal? My colleague Toni is the stoker. His job is to make sure there’s always water in the boiler, coal in the furnace and constantly turn it over so that it burns well... Which he does for hours and hours. Sometimes we can be travelling for up to 14 hours before we reach our destination!

They say that nowadays there are much more modern, cleaner locomotives. Thank goodness for that! I’m told they work with diesel or electricity.

That’s right! Now we are going to look at one that operates with electricity. In the House of Trains there’s one that is blue and has a very funny shape.