Text 1: Three hours beneath the railway, by Daniel Okoro

An original contemporary newspaper feature.

At 12.42 in the morning, the final passenger train leaves Eastborough station. Only when the control room confirms that the electricity has been switched off does tunnel inspector Leena Shah lead her four-person team on to the track.

They have just under three hours to examine a section of tunnel before the railway must reopen. Wearing helmets, head torches and reflective clothing, the inspectors walk slowly beside the rails. Water drips from the brick roof and gathers around their boots.

Leena photographs patches of brickwork and uses a hand-held scanner to measure whether known cracks have widened. A colleague clears leaves and mud from the drainage channels while another records their location on a tablet. Every tool is counted before the team enters and counted again when it leaves.

‘Most nights we find nothing urgent, but that doesn’t mean the inspection was wasted,’ Leena says. ‘The point is to notice a small change before it becomes a serious one.’ The work demands concentration: the tunnel is nearly two kilometres long, and repeated shadows from cables and pipes can make the walls difficult to examine.

By 3.35, Leena has sent her report to the control room and the team is walking back towards the station. Commuters arriving a few hours later will see no sign that anyone has been there. ‘That suits me,’ she says. ‘A quiet railway in the morning means we have done our job.’

Text 2: The examiner of Bracken Tunnel, by Our Railway Correspondent

An original article composed in the style of a newspaper from the 1890s; it is a modern simulation rather than a historical source.

Long after the station lamps have been extinguished, Mr Amos Bell begins his weekly examination of Bracken Tunnel. Accompanied by a track worker, he enters after the last evening train, each man carrying an oil lantern.

The tunnel is more than a mile in length and is blackened by the smoke of countless engines. Water runs between the bricks, and soot settles upon Mr Bell’s coat and face. He holds his lantern close to the walls, taps doubtful bricks with a small hammer and measures cracks with a wooden rule. His findings are written in a pocketbook which is often damp by the time he returns.

The men must work steadily, for an early train is due soon after five. On some nights, a goods engine is expected before then. Mr Bell receives notice of it from the signalman and waits with his companion in one of the recesses built into the tunnel wall until it has thundered past.

The inspection is tiring to the eyes and neck, he says, because a man must look above him for much of the way. Nevertheless, he takes satisfaction in discovering the smallest defect. Last month he found several loose bricks near the roof, and repairs were completed before another train passed beneath them.

‘The traveller sees only darkness from the carriage window,’ Mr Bell remarked. ‘It is our business to know what that darkness contains.’

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what inspecting railway tunnels was like for the workers.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.