I remember what I have been told: you don't need to understand Polish to know what passengers are saying when they have to fight their way through the brambles after you fail to line up the train with the platform.Naturally, I completely muff it and have to be rescued, humiliatingly by Hendryk, who speaks no English but, jokingly, brings out a stick to remind me to get it right next time (and, presumably, to safeguard his bonus). It's a job which demands the sort of physical effort which we have forgotten about in our microelectronic age. First you have to move a heavy rod called the regulator, which allows steam into the cylinders, then, as the train gathers speed you have to strain to turn a lumbering heavy wheel called the cut-off, which controls the steam expansion, acting effectively like gears in a car The scary bit is the brakes Rotate the handle and nothing happens. You can also forget about any pollution controls, which is why I can happily stoke up the fire of 50-year-old 2-6-2 locomotive Ol49 23 until a vast pall of black smoke hangs over the town. How can this be possible? "The great thing about Poland," says Jones, "is that there are no lawyers."Driving a steam engine, as I soon discover, is more than just watching the signals, bossing the fireman and hanging out of the window posing in a Jean Gabin hat. Larkin would have been happily at home pausing at Wolsztyn station, with its country junction atmosphere - rusty tracks and sidings knee high in poppies and ragwort. Everywhere you can sniff that treacly, tarry smell of heavy grease on metal, which was once ubiquitous, but is all but vanished in modern Britain.Also absent on this sunny June morning are any health and safety aparatchiks, which is why I, a complete amateur, am on the footplate, poised to drive the 11.07 on the 50-mile trip to Posnan, Poland's fourth city, after only a day of rudimentary training.

Like many British blokes who had once been a train buff, he'd mourned the end of steam in the UK in 1968, and was now spending the odd weekend taking parties of enthusiasts around Europe's last steam railways.Then he had a reckless but brilliant idea. Even though he didn't (and still doesn't) speak Polish, he went to PKP, the Polish state railway, and asked the sort of barmy question no one would ever venture at home. "If I raised some cash from enthusiasts in Britain, would you keep steam on the main line in exchange for them having a 'timeshare' on driving the engines?" The bureaucrats of PKP - often wryly described as "the last Communist state in eastern Europe" - astonishingly said yes: "You get a hundred people to put in £2,000 each and we'll keep steam going for five years."As it turned out only 22 Brits stumped up the cash, but what the hell, thought Jones. At 47, his second marriage was breaking up, and his business was on the rocks after taking a hit in currency exchange on Black Wednesday.

Not some polished and pampered train on a heritage railway dressed up as Thomas the Tank Engine, but a workaday steam giant, oozing oil and sneezing soot, bearing fare-paying commuters at up to 50mph on a schedule designed for modern diesel trains.It is a myth that somewhere in the recesses of the Third World there are scheduled steam passenger trains chugging along on the main line as though the Empire had never ended. Here I am, on the 16.05 from Zbaszynek junction on the Warsaw-Berlin main line, heading for Wolsztyn in central Poland, one of the last timetabled mainline steam services in the world - and I've got my hand on the throttle. In China, the last country to build steam locomotives, they only pull freight trains. If you're lucky, you might catch the odd one on a secondary line in Syria or Eritrea or Burma, but in many developing countries these days, modern electric or diesel services put Network Rail to shame.Which is why it is so extraordinary that the engine shed in the sleepy little market town of Wolsztyn, in what was once the heart of Prussia, should end up as the last bastion of the world's steam passenger trains, largely thanks to the efforts of one Englishman, who in effect, has been paying the bankrupt Polish rail system to keep it going.Flashback to 1997, when, in the UK, life was going through the rough for Howard Jones, a travel industry executive who'd cut his teeth in the low fares business with Freddie Laker. My own real life one, in fact, and probably that of every boy who once wanted to be an engine driver. I've coal in my hair, grease up my nose and I can barely hear above the hiss of the steam The heat of the fire is skinning my eyeballs. I spot a Transit van up ahead, speeding towards an ungated level crossing.

Whoo! Whoo! I lean on the whistle, praying he's going to stop. It's too late for the brakes on this 100-ton loco travelling at 40mph, with its train of double-deck coaches full of passengers. Then, phew! A grin and thumbs up from the fireman as the van shoots out on the other side of the track.Lucky, because this is no simulator, or video game, or dream Yet it is a fantasy of a kind. With 39 recently refurbished suites and 11 gorgeous villas spread out over a third of the island, the resort offers guests complete seclusion. Fine dining is found at The Verandah Restaurant and the Estate House. Luxury ocean-view rooms from £361 per person per night, fully inclusive.What shouldn't I miss?Visit the Sunday night "jump up" on Shirley Heights where you can watch the beautiful sunset and have a barbecue feast while listening to steel bands. Stop off at Stingray City where you could swim with southern stingrays around the pristine coral reef on the north side of the island.