The lavish pay package awarded to the next head of Network Rail, Mark Carne — £650,000, in case this astronomical sum has slipped the mind — is in marked contrast to the modest remuneration enjoyed by Lord Hurcomb when he became leader of the British Transport Commission in 1948.

Having accepted the challenge of this far larger undertaking in the transport field, covering railways, canals and road freight, he declined fully one fifth of his salary because he considered himself overpaid. He was applauded for this in a letter in The Times on Monday from W.S. Becket, a member of the British Railways Board from 1953 to 1989.

Ah yes, Mr Becket, but as you probably remember there were other ways of rewarding rail chiefs at the time. One was in the naming of locomotives after them.

Thus when the Britannia class of Pacifics was introduced by British Railways in 1951, there was among the fleet of 55 locomotives one called Lord Hurcomb. And where do you suppose this was to be found in the ‘league table’ of names? Ahead of William Shakespeare, as it happens. Ahead, too, of the Iron Duke, Oliver Cromwell, Clive of India, Charles Dickens, Robin Hood, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt.

Why, Lord Hurcomb, number 70001 (pictured), was in second position, right behind 70000 Britannia herself.

Something similar happened with the LNER’s A4 class. The world’s fastest steam engine, Mallard, took her place in the list well behind company directors like William Whitelaw, Sir Ronald Matthews, Sir Ralph Wedgwood and Andrew K. McCosh. Today the locomotives are remembered, the people forgotten.