First, Mooney and Spooney want the job of stationmaster and meet interesting but annoying characters. Second, there are the light opera lovers Orlando and Sophonisba, whose humor derives from the travesty of a domestic scene inflated into a tragic leave-taking when Orlando takes the train to Birmingham to buy port wine for dinner that evening. The plots intertwine, of course, at the rail station. The resulting tone is "unabashedly strange and bizarre."