One of my unforgettable childhood impressions is seeing the shadow of steam of a passing steam locomotive billowing high above the street where I was walking by my grandparents‘ hand. This fascination never quite left me. And so, I became a volunteer fireman on steam locomotives. I was also on the boards of various national and international railway heritage organisations for some decades.
The steam locomotive was the first motive power for land transport beyond man and animal strenght. With the dawn of the railway age in 1825, it dominated rail transport for about 130 years, until the midst of the 20th century. Only a few are still in regular use today, most of them in Germany by chance.
But starting at the Talyllyn railway in Wales in 1951, volunteers and enthusiasts have kept steam locomotives in operation on railways around the world to run museum or tourist trains. In these now almost 75 years, they have written an own chapter of railway history. Thus, the fire has not yet been extinguished and the shadow of steam falls into the present.
This gallery is a reminiscence to those who contributed to this chapter of railway history and to pay tribute to the colleagues who keep these engines running through their hard work, It brings together my contemporary photographs of steam locomotives and trains around the world. They are deliberatly shown in juxtapostion with the contemporary environment rather than in a seemingly historical setting. Thus generating an interference with the time we came from. Unfortunately, not in all countries the present differs as much as one may wish. The fact that these trains nevertheless represent an outdated technique is conveyed by the presentation in black and white. As it corresponds to our visual habits of historical photography.
