I saw her coming around the dirt road from well up on the hill. I knew it was her, as I had been seized by a perfectly irrational desire to make use of my precision zoom lens and note her swinging arms and swishing floral shorts. She was singing again. The road ran alongside the railway track. She was meant to be waiting with the rest of us to capture the 4.57 tourist train through Cass. She was meant to be poised with her camera. Not singing.

"Quality" I had said to her in the train watchers' hut, rather enjoying the authoritative tone of my own voice, "now that is true beauty. The Ka942 loco for example. That is a Thing Well Made."

Only to have her throw her head back and laugh with a flash of teeth and an indulgent shake of flesh.

"But it's the romance! The sound and power! And just to be here in this fanTABulous place. "

Well. I had been coming to this place for years to watch the old locos, the new diesels, graffitied goods carriages and waving tourist trains, grunt through the Waimakariri river basin and on to Arthur's Pass. Never before had I encountered such a woman in our mountain weekends . Or any woman for that matter.

I felt a renewed surge of irritation. The 4.57 should have appeared from around the Lake Sarah bend by now. It was 4.49. And the heat ought to have abated, but it raged on like an oven carelessly left on by a negligent housewife.

Then the ground did its familiar rumble and I caught that glorious acrid smell. A beast, at full charge with its might and will in absolute submission to its creators. Men. At the helm, or furiously fuelling its belly. Facelessly flashing by, maybe offering a muscled arm to wave at him or the other spotters, perched in strategic locations around the yellow hillside.

But wait. This was not right. Sure she was meant to slow a little through Cass, maybe blow her whistle at the old station shed and homestead, but not begin to decelerate and slow to almost nothing as if some fool had accidentally tripped over the power chord. What was this? She (the human she), was running up to the front of the train, still waving her hands about and carrying on like a child with too much candyfloss at A&P Show day.

What with the steam, and the heat waves, the image of her climbing up into the cab of the train was somewhat occluded, despite my best efforts with the zoom lens. But I swear I saw that same tatooed, brown man-arm reach down to grab her bangled one. Then the engine began to gather itself back to full force, the whistle blew, rather a little too long and with a little too much exhuberance, and the late 4.57 was on its way again.