Steam Railways

Even today, over 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. 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 rail. Steam became the driving force of industrial expansion in the 19th century. In this book, approximately 350 photographs from the vast archives of Mirrorpix provide a nostalgic and fascinating look back at the age of steam, from its heyday of the early 20th century to its demise in the 1950s and 1960s, and subsequent resurrection through the work of the many railway preservation groups.