"His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world."
Charles Dickens wrote the story about the lonely signal man and his fatal encounter in 1866, after he himself having survived a dramatic traincrash, which had a profound effect on his subsequent life.