Hilariously this was a plot point I read recently. Isambard Kingdom Brunel replaced the firebox with some poorly shielded uranium, but the initial locomotive that was to demonstrate the technology was sabotaged and exploded, killing his parents.

This same book also had a fictional mad inventor who created a part newt-human hybrid named Victoria with womanly assets if you catch my drift, who upon failing to educate it he sent to a brothel because he couldn’t stand to “dispose of it” but when the princess and heir to the throne Elizabeth went missing, the newt-human hybrid Victoria was installed on the throne to prevent a constitutional crisis. And this is all events that occurred in the first 2 pages, so I’m not even spoiling anything!

spoilers for ending of the story *Victoria* in *A Steampunk Trilogy*

To spoil where the Queen to be Victoria was so well hidden that she couldn’t be found, she was in fact working in the newt-human hybrid Victoria’s room at the brothel! Seriously bonkers stories in that book!