Bright and ambitious, young Jim Stringer moves from the English countryside to London, eager to begin work as a railwayman at Waterloo Station. It is 1903, the dawn of the Edwardian age, when steam runs the nation and the railways drive progress. Jim finds, however, that his duties involve a graveyard shift, literally - a railway line that takes coffins from London morgues to the gigantic new cemeteries being dug in the city's outskirts. He also learns that the men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing of him - and his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what's going on before he's issued a one-way ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway?