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In the Tracks of the Last Steam Trains by Cyril Le Tourneur D’Ison w/dust jacket
In the Tracks of the Last Steam Trains by Cyril Le Tourneur DIson
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket
188 pages
Copyright 2003
CONTENTS
Introduction 7
End of a Line: The Trans-Manchurian Express8
Cuba: The Sugar Trains40
Eritrea: The Resurrection of a Railway66
Last Train for Darjeeling - the "Toy Train"92
The Little Trains of Java118
In Search of the African Dream138
The Last Bastion of Steam in Europe156
The Loggers' Train: The Mocanitza168
INTRODUCTION
Must we look forward with dread, in the words of Paul Hamp (Le Rail), to "the time when railways are forgotten and lie rusting in a landscape redesigned by new inventions"?
From Guayaquil to Vladivostok, the death knell is sounding for the legendary rail lines with their obsessive rhythm that once brought people together and which left them time for their own inner journey of exploration. In these, the first years of a new millennium, in which increasingly powerful technologies continue to shrink the planet, speed has all but banished the romance and nostalgia of long-distance travel. The traveller has lost the "habit of slowness", and the mythical steam trains are drawing their last breath.
The locomotives had an alchemy that transformed water and coal into steam and flame, and the trains were redolent with "the very essence and all the magic of overland travel" (Joseph Kessel). Setting out to find those that remain in the remotest corners of the globe is to rediscover the faithful servants of a magical world, men intimately bound to the machines performing the "swan song" of the rail age. The iron road still hums to the combined music of their engines, while their lyrical solos echo on down distant valleys. This is the fabulous realm of wanderlust, of travel unbounded by time, where the ear can still catch the plaintive cries of the last iron monsters as, like mechanical vagabonds, they meander amongst the forgotten backwaters of the railway, often on narrow-gauge tracks between stations disappearing under trees.
The steam train, in whose murmuring rumble reality mingles with dream, bears witness to the still passionately living nature of a mode of transport overtaken by time. From Victor Hugo's "blind iron horse on its unyielding road" to the "raging locomotives" in which Blaise Cendrars perceives "the sobbing and wild strains of an eternal liturgy", poets have discovered a soul in these creatures: they are machines, but with the power of motion.
The clattering of the bogies and the "age-old jousting of the pistons" form the rhythmical accompaniment to comically swaying Javanese Berliners, the interminable journey across Chinese Mongolia in Spartan sleeping cars, the amazing sugar trains still wending their way across the plains of Cuba, a luxurious Rovos conquering the Zambezi, an Italian Ansaldo Breda heroically mounting the Abyssinian plateau, Resitas plunging through the forested depths of the Carpathians, the toing and froing of the excessively ornate Polish locomotives, or the epic struggles of the 779B up the Himalayan foothills.
Amongst those who forged the myths of the permanent way, the drivers are the last true Lords of the Rail, intoxicated with motion and the heady magic of depots wreathed in white steam. In the familiar and friendly bustle of the stations, travellers with no ties to bind them set off on unpredictable voyages. A snatch of conversation, a hurried glance, a whispered goodbye, a destiny about to change forever: scenes so influenced by the highly charged atmosphere of imminent departure. The leisurely course of the train dilates time and space; the journey takes on a profound significance, sharpening the traveller's perception, until the most insignificant details are dramatically revealed. Time finally registers in his memory. The landscape passes before him as if filmed by a ceaselessly panning camera, dazing him with a welter of sights and sounds, each awakening some secret recollection.
As long as the "iron road" continues to stir something inside us, then:
"Make haste, my darling,Be afraid that one dayA train will no longer pluck at your heart."
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE La Victoire
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