IT will be a familiar story for many passengers – a railway journey isn’t all it should be, and an angry letter to the train company follows.

But modern-day grievances about punctuality or overcrowding are nothing to the problems 100 years ago, if a letter unearthed by York archivists is anything to go by.

Staff at the National Railway Museum have been researching a number of old locomotives, ahead of Railfest later this year, and came across an angry letter by an unimpressed vicar, written in 1912.

The Reverend Brock, the Vicar of Criggion, had travelled on a train on the Shropshire and Montgomery Railway, pulled by Gazelle, thought to the smallest standard-guage steam loco in the UK.

But while the loco will be drawing crowds to York this year, when it goes on display at Railfest, Mr Brock was decidedly unimpressed.

In his letter, he wrote: “Proceeding to the branch to Criggion, I was put with another man and two women into the back part of an engine with only a screen between us and the fire – no roof and the sparks and smuts falling over us – one spark nearly got in my eye, with danger of being blinded - my clothes too injured by the same.

“I wish to know whether passengers can thus be treated and deceived, for the last time I came, about a fortnight ago, I was conveyed in a carriage, as I have hitherto been.

“I had occasion to use the railway for my wife and daughter and friends from London, and of course I cannot subject them to such risk and barbarous treatment.”

The Rev Brock’s concerns seem to have been taken on board, as a cab was subsequently added for passengers, and a carriage added in 1915 or 1916.

Gazelle is currently on display at the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum in Kent, but the 119-year-old locomotive will come to York from June 2 to 10, for Railfest 2012.

The event, which coincides with the York 800 celebrations, will include locomotives from across Britain, on an area the size of 11 football pitches. There will also be various events and activities taking place.

An spokesman for the National Railway Museum said the festival would include historic documents to tell the stories behind the attractions.

For more information, visit nrm.org.uk/railfest2012