There it stood, a great thing of wheels and engines, capable of two hundred and fifty miles an hour, useless save that now and then he would mount it and fling himself backwards and forwards across that cumbered work-yard.

He had meant to go around the little world with it; he had made it with that intention, while he was still no more than a dreaming boy.

Now its spokes were rusted deep red like wounds, wherever the enamel had been chipped away.
"You must make a road for it first, Sonnie," Cossar had said, "before you can do that." So one morning about dawn the young giant and his brothers had set to work to make a road about the world.

They seem to have had an inkling of opposition impending, and they had worked with remarkable vigour.

The world had discovered them soon enough, driving that road as straight as a flight of a bullet towards the English Channel, already some miles of it levelled and made and stamped hard.