The final years of steam operation in Britain have seen a brilliant flowering of railway photography.
 Up to the 1940's photographers were more intent on recording the wealth of design variety in detail. Emphasis was on the engineering and stylistic minutiae of the locomotives. In the last decade or so, as the number of classes has rapidly dwindled, a large number of artists have set about capturing the almost human moods of the steam locomotive in rest and in action, and to picture it as an historic feature of the British environment. This book is not only a dramatic record of scenes that will soon be gone for ever, but an imaginative memorial to one of the most romantic pieces of machinery man ever devised, and a richly pictorial piece of British history.

The first, title page is missing.