The World of the Last Steam Engines
Cyril Le Tourneur d'Ison
Gamma Explorer
At the dawn of a new millennium, the steam engine, the most potent symbol of the industrial revolution, is about to vanish from the face of the earth. Electricity and diesel have relegated the steam age forever to history books recounting humanity’s industrial heritage. And yet, just like an endangered species, some 100-year old steam engines still hold out on railways lines in faraway lands.
Preview
It is the strange and fascinating fate of a railway world in which human endeavour still keeps alive the potent myth of the railway. This world brings together some of the myth's humble servants: railwaymen, engine-drivers, railroad employees, passengers, enthusiasts. Time stands still for all of them.
This work sets out to bring alive for one last time the poetry of the black-faced men, of steam, with its brute force, mechanical whistles and billowing frothy clouds. There are still many activities that are linked to the railways, and these give us an opportunity to show how, around the world, people's work still has close ties with the world of the steam engines.
To be published in September 2000 by Editions du Chêne. 210 pages, illustrated, edited by Colette Veron.
