there remains something awe-inspiring about the RCH – not so much the scale of its work, which is trifling by the standards of today’s digital technology, but the means by which it was carried out. The lost routines of the thousands of anonymous clerks at Eversholt Street – the endless, patient exactions of mental arithmetic in fractions and non-decimal units, even the neat copperplate writing – seem almost beyond the powers of the modern desk-worker. The same goes for the endurance and vigilance of the overworked engine drivers, firemen, shunters, signalmen and others who kept the Victorian
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