Opening paragraphs.......................

Forty minutes out of London, passing through the rolling green fields and cherry orchards of Kent, the morning train of the South Eastern Railway attained its maximum speed of fifty-four miles an hour.  Riding the bright blue-painted engine, the driver in his red uniform could be seen standing upright in the open air, unshielded by any cab or windscreen, while at his feet the engineer crouched, shoveling coal into the glowing furnaces of the engine.  Behind the chugging engine and tender were three yellow first-class coaches, followed by seven green second-class coaches, and at the very end, a gray, windowless luggage van.
-Michael Crichton,  The Great Train Robbery:  A Novel (1975)

Crichton's tale is a fictionalized version of The Great Gold Robbery of 1855.  Wiki's accounting of the affair is here.