I am pleased to see Char and even Borderstone himself keeping the topic on the rails and also the fire well stoked here
At the risk of incurring further wrath from that young whippersnapper Walterstone by enlarging this thread, I have to say that
the interesting trio of pics of British steam locomotives produced
by Sir Gerry started me a train of thought and signalled
that maybe I should make a couple of points in response
I note that all 3 are still in operating condition
the top picture is of 4472 a Class A3 Pacific 4-6-2 the "Flying Scotsman"
arguably the most famous steam engine in the world:-
In 1934 Flying Scotsman was the first steam locomotive to authentically achieve a speed of 100mph
see:-
http://www.flyingscotsman.com/history.htm
for American viewers:-
From 1969 to 1972 Flying Scotsman toured the United States of America
For Australians:-
In 1988 and 1989 Flying Scotsman played a key role in helping Australia
celebrate her bicentennial by touring the country (see note below ++)
the bottom pic is of 4468 is another Pacific but from class A4 "Mallard" the other arguably most famous steam engine in the world: as Sir Gerald well knows on July 3rd, 1938 she took the still unbeaten world record as the fastest steam engine at 126mph
I looked twice at the picture chosen by Gerry and thought I recognised one carriage as being a dynamometer car (used to measure a locomotive's performance and then thought I wonder if that pic was taken on the record breaking day. Sure enough after a bit of Googling I found the source page from which Gerry stole the pic and in context you can read that it was indeed taken just before the record run began.
see that page at:-
http://www.wandleys.demon.co.uk/mallard.htm
another nice pic is at:-
http://is.freephoto.com/images/24/12/24_12_4.jpg.
Mallard is now gracefully retired at the National Railway Museum in York
One of her sisters was renamed after Ike and is apparently on display at Green Bay Wisconsin North of Chicago
in the National Railroad Museum see:-
http://www.nationalrrmuseum.org/
there are lots of pics at
http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/pix/gb/...ER/A4/pix.html
As I thought about an early hobby I realised that it is now fully a half century
since I was an avid trainspotter and it is worth noting that in those innocent
unlitigious days when we had never even heard of the word anorak,
It was possible to purchase as a school chum and I did
a special rover ticket allowing unlimited travel over a
50-odd mile radius and we spent much time sneaking into the many engine sheds to try to "cop" (see for the first time) even more locos!!!
returning to central of the 3 locos that Gerry selected
this depicts ex-Southern Railway number 506 (a Urie Class S15 4-6-0) which is a rather less glamourous representative of the fantastic story of UK steam preservation which was largely accidental and due to Dai Woodham's scrapyard at Barry South Wales from which over 200 scrapped steam locos were rescued mostly as rusted hulks and lovingly restored at often great expense to form the backbone of the UK's extensive collection of preserved steam railways
Part 1 of this story is at:-
http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/barry1.htm
Indeed so concerned are the enthusiasts that run the plethora of preserved railways about the wear and tare on these sometimes venerable machines that two major projects are in hand to build brand new locos.
The first is the ambitious £2 million building of 60163 "Tornado" a new Peppercorn Class A1 Pacific
the recently updated web site is at:-
http://www.a1steam.com/
The second is the construction of the 1000th British Railways standard
a "Clan" class Pacific 72012 "Hengist" being built slowly at Swanage in my home county of Dorset see their sadly un-updated web site at:-
http://www.br-standard.co.uk/72/aims.htm
Perhaps the afore-mentioned pudding fellow could investigate and report back on the current situation with that project**:
I always thought that the Clans were the most attractive of all the Standard designs and would love to see the finished creation in a future visit home.
Regarding the state of steam in the States I believe this is on a vastly smaller scale than in Britain. On our extensive vacation in the U.S. South West last year I did get a short glimpse of a steaming engine at the Grand Canyon Village station, but a planned journey on what remains of the Denver and Rio Grande at Durango in Colorado was curtailed by the extensive wild fires in that area which caused cancellation of services at the very time of our visit
I also recall a very fine Canadian CNR steamer (Confederation 4-8-4 number 6218) that I photographed near Montreal in October 1964 I see that this was retired in 1971 and is now on display in the Fort Erie Railroad Museum. Anyway to revert to Gord's opening display I have personally never worked up much enthousiasm for the modern mundane diesels. But I do have a splendid slide that I took of a CNR diesel number 6782 posing quite prettily with a rockies backdrop at Jaspar Alberta early one July morning in 1966.To my untutored eye it now looks very like the prosaic diesel 5426 snapped by Gord... I mean they both have red front ends and black and white stripes.... but no steam and therefore no emotion!!
Anyway I would like to try my hand again at posting links to my 2 pictures (I am making jpegs from the slides and will put them up on a page on my web site tomorrow
Notes:-
** But for now as this posting has probably hugely bored the non-afficiandos reading this. So Gerry if you wish to reply to me by e-mail I will quite understand :-fowlesjohn@hotmail.com
++And finally a bit of light relief. The ability of 4472 to travel so extensively is due to the fact that the railway/railroad was perfected in Northern England by amongst others George Stephenson and he simply put his rails into the existing deep wheel ruts/tracks of the carts which he found were 4 feet 8 1/2 inches apart
the full explanation is at:-
http://tobaccotalk.itgo.com/OffTheDeepEnd.htm where there is a rivetting dissertation:-
Subject: The Impact of the Roman Empire on Space Shuttle Design
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.
------------------
My Gordon Lightfoot webring
starts at
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot
[This message has been edited by johnfowles (edited August 21, 2003).]
[This message has been edited by johnfowles (edited August 21, 2003).]
I got the Steel Rail Blues.
You lucky! I'll always find hearing train whistles fun,no matter how old I get! 
