Description
Even today, more than 50 years after the last scheduled service was hauled by a steam locomotive in Britain, many people’s abiding image of rail travel comes from that age of steam, a romantic view of big muscular locomotives, belching clouds of steam and smoke, hauling long, snaking trains through picturesque countryside to the sound of the great chuffing from the engine, the thunder of the wheels on the rails, and the haunting notes of the whistle. All this, and the fact that engines came in so many different shapes and sizes, conspired to give steam locomotives personalities of their own, to make them seem almost as if they were alive—quite different from today’s super-efficient, quiet, clean and anonymous electric trains. Britain’s railway system is the oldest in the world, and British engineers pioneered the development of the steam locomotive along with iron and steel rails that permitted rapid expansion.
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