The very early steam engines did not have gears as you say. There was an old train I used to play on as a kid. I'm sure that it did have a gearbox on either side with a levers for both brake and gearshift. As I don't have anything to confirm this presently, I won't comment on it further but if I unexpectedly run across something I'll let you know. I ran the reverse problem over in my mind last night and I believe that running into reverse was probably a common problem with early train engines, so much so I'd bet, that it was not unexpected that a train would start in reverse unintentionally. As to bryce 3.1: There is only so much money In my budget available for software.(nuf said.)