‘Without us, no wheel would turn’: the unsung heroes keeping England’s transport moving

On shift, but out of sight – from ‘that person with the table tennis bats’ on the airport tarmac to remote signallers managing rail traffic

Not many people get to park their car here – bang in the middle of Heathrow airport, on the taxiway just a stretch of grass away from where a line of passenger planes is coming in to land.

It’s close enough to see the shimmering air and smoke as nose tyres hit the tarmac. “An A380 will put down as much rubber as a car’s entire tyre,” Jack Quantick-Thorne says. He knows – part of his job is to ensure the runway team scrapes it off and patches things up overnight. And it is all recycled, he adds.