ABSTRACT

On his way home, Fred always walks across a little footbridge over a railway line. One day, as he looks over the parapet, he sees a runaway ‘trolley’, that is a small rail wagon, has somehow loosed its brake and begun to roll at alarming speed down the track. In just a few seconds it will pass under the bridge and crash into a group of railway workers who (owing to government privatisation policies – and is that ethical?) have been poorly trained and are eating their lunchtime sandwiches out of plastic boxes, and not keeping proper watch. In seconds the wagon will whoosh past, under the bridge and plough into them! Now, from where he is, Fred can easily see the signalman in the

signal box, quietly oblivious to the drama as it unfolds. He calculates quickly that if he alerts the signalman to quickly change the points, the trolley will be diverted onto a different track just in time. A complicating factor is, Fred realises, that there is someone on the other track too – an old lady, who is not paying attention to anything but collecting butterflies in a jar.