BEING a railway enthusiast and explaining to puzzled friends what the attraction may be, it has not escaped me that most people do not know what a locomotive is.

As someone asks why people are photographing a loco coming off a train at Yarmouth, I explain about the 1960s diesel loco that is the centre of attention.

They point to a carriage mid-train that just happens to be painted in a different colour scheme and ask if that is the locomotive in question, and so on...

As it happens, the locomotive is one of the most significant inventions of the industrial age, allowing goods and people to be transported across land in a quantity never before realisable.

Just think how heavy coal is, for example, and how you may transport enough to feed a blast furnace, not to mention the ore and so on.

So this significant, world-changing and ever-present invention of a Cornish man that changed the world in such a significant way, for better or for worse, is lost to most.

Perhaps we should say it more, for despite being a multi-syllable word, it rolls off the tongue in a very satisfying way.

Perhaps one of the greatest words of the language, but I am biased.

Duncan McEvoy, Swinerton Avenue, York.