PETER BARRINGTON talks to novelist and historian Stephen Done who extends his passion for railways with a crime novel set in the days of steam

When he was a lad of about eight, Stephen Done thought it was about time he fulfilled an ambition and asked his father if he could have a train ride in what became the closing days of the steam era.

The family lived in Brackley where the Brackley Central Station was a stop on the old Great Central Railway that ran from London Marylebone to Leicester, Nottingham and points north to Liverpool.

But just as the trip was being planned the axe fell on the service that at the time, 1968, was operated by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER).

"So I never got to go on the local train service," said Stephen.

However, he has since made up for the omission by re-creating the line in his first crime novel Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, a reference to the smoke that billowed from locomotive chimney stacks and also to the familiar tune.

The title neatly fits in with the hobby of one of Stephen's characters, Sgt Trinder, who collects 78rpm shellac discs of the popular songs and tunes of the 1930s and 1940s.

Stephen, who was born in 1960, explained: "As an historian, I am fascinated by the immediate post-war period of the Atlee government. I could easily have set the story in the Second World War but I preferred to set Smoke Gets in Your Eyes in and around Woodford Halse, the large village or small town just north of Brackley that was on the same train line.

"Woodford Halse was an important junction on the line where another line branched off for Banbury and Stratford-upon-Avon. It was a huge centre for locomotives with a large marshalling or shunting yard and there were also various depots and engine sheds or houses," said Stephen.

He has plans for more novels set on the railway line and might move forward in time to the 1950s.

"I have always read crime novels along with my father with whom I often discussed the merits of Andrew Martin, Georges Simenon and others."

Writing novels was not the career he had mapped out for himself as, after studying at Magdalen College School in Brackley, he went to Nene College, Northampton, and went on to take a fine arts degree at Leeds University.

But finding art and painting was not really his forte Stephen re-trained to become a museum curator and first worked at Bristol Industrial Museum. "My first real job as a curator was at the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum at Merthr Tydfil, an early 19th-century mock Tudor castle built by an ironmaster. It is full of fine decorative arts and a huge amount of social and industrial history. I oversaw the restoration of the interiors back to their original Grade-I listing. It is local authority-owned and is still partly occupied by a school," said Stephen.

His next and current job could hardly be more different as in 1997 he became the founding curator of the Liverpool Football Club museum at Anfield stadium.

"Although at school I played rugby and cricket I do like football and sometimes get the chance to play in the Liverpool veterans' team."

The museum is crammed with Liverpool football memorabilia from programmes to team shirts and footballs and also takes in home-made gear worn by the fans to matches.

"The museum is not big enough to take all we have. It is very popular and in 2007 we achieved in the region of 144,000 visitors. We expect to do better this year as Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture."

So now Stephen is involved in nostalgia on two fronts — football and crime writing.

"I have discovered I like writing better than painting. Writing is something I feel very happy with as it is a way of expressing things. Writing is very fulfilling."

Stephen's one regret is that his father, Harry, died before the novel was published.

"He did like what I had begun to write, but, sadly, he did not see it finished," said Stephen.

 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is published by the Hastings Press in paperback at £7.50.