While the smaller steam locomotives of museums and tourist railroads are nice, there is nothing like
the big machines of the main line railroads. This was steam at its finest, machines with two, three,
four, five, six thousand and more horsepower. These were locomotives that could really hammer
the earth with their passing, that could rally get up and roll the tonnage or split the wind with a
passenger and express consist. They were also machines whose architecture really expressed form
and function in a most sophisticated and direct way.
It takes a lot of railroad to put these machines in their element. Only on the mainline can they really put on the show for which they were built. The nations mainline railroads, where these could run, are today very busy, congested lines and the railroads are understandably reluctant to give track time for the few machines that survive. But survive a few do and it is a real show when one can see them operate.
I have been working at photographing these locomotives for almost 40 years, but I have not been focusing shooting them in operation. Instead my interest has been in photographing the details of the machinery, to show what they are made of and what they are like. This has been an ongoing project with my doing a few images every few years, whenever one of these big beasts comes out and makes an appearance. The most recent was in 2002 when former AT&SF 3751 made a trip from Los Angeles to Williams, Arizona where it ran on the Grand Canyon Railway.
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