Online Catalogue last updated 28th of May 2009
This book is a pilgrimage towards recapturing the majesty and power of steam's last giants. A contemplation of the indefinable quality that set them apart. 'Everything is spherical or cylindrical', wrote Paul Cezanne back in 1905. The eminent French artist could have been illustrating the eternal shapes and create the fascination of steam locomotion, be it Puffing Billy of a massive Beyer-Garratt. Wheels, boiler, smokebox, cylinders, smokestack, steam domes, headlamp, compressor - all of them speak nothing if not the cylindrical and spherical, the mystic language of the cosmos.
The intent of this book is to sniff warm oil mingled with steam, and catch the heady scent of firebox coal as we recall Queensland's chunky C19, the Commonwealth's marathon runner - the C class, the big brute 720 Berkshires of South Australia, Victoria's lone and elegant 'Heavy Harry' and the latter day able narrow gauge Q class of Tasmania and the 'Sammy' of the West. All are distinguished in being designed and built in Australia; some are still preserved, tributes to a lost art, the end of the heavyweight line. And the AD60 Beyer-Garratt of New South Wales, though built overseas yet significantly modified to develop optimum power for Australian conditions. It too finds a place in these pages as the final and most powerful of all the steam giants.
Far and farewell have we come in a nation that once designed and made steam's massive locomotives. But consider the echo of a whistle on a frosty night, the blur of speeding side rods, the white plume trailed across green paddocks. Like the artist's painting and the composer's symphony, this is stuff that stirs the imagination and in its spell, the romance of steam's last giants will ever endure.
Code No. 011978, 255 pages, ISBN 0909650470, $25.50