Running out of Steam & Catching up with Diesels

This is a wonderful history of the steam era coming to an end and the rise of diesels. Using contemporary advertising material, timetables, photographs, and other printed ephemera, and combined with primary source material, the author has created a nostalgic journey of the railways and those who worked there. Every state is covered, as well as the Commonwealth Railways. Chapters include information on some of the great personalities who steered the railways into the era of diesel. Across Australia, one hundred thousand men and women were 'in the railways.' From power houses to poultry farms, laundries to loco sheds, wheelbarrows to workshops, snow resorts to signal boxes, the railway had it all. From lumps of iron, men hammered out a mighty locomotive. Skilled craftsmen shaped first class carriages for the rich. Day and night, from Katoomba to Kalgoorlie, Mount Gambier to Mount Isa, the rhythm of rolling wheel on silvery rail was never silent. For much of this time, steam was inseparable from Australia's railways. But, by the turn of the century, the railway scene had utterly changed and steam was a fond memory. New motive power had taken command of the tracks and trains. For Australia's railways the diesel-electric locomotive was the key to survival-and the future. [Subject: Railways, Locomotive History, Transportation, Australian Studies]