What is the Romance of Steam ?

A term most of us would have heard at some point around steam locos, but what does it mean?

Does it have a genral meaning or do we all have our own interpretation of it?

 

To see a steam locomotive in action and to hear it at the end of the train is something special, the engine has life, it's breathing, it's creating an amazing atmosphere for all who hear and see it. This moment in my opinion is often described as romantic for two reasons;

Because it can build emotions inside a person akin (but not the same) to the feelings of being with someone you care for;

or;

Because, being something special to behold, draws couples together in the moment.

Just watch some couples when they see a steam engine go past, they tend to hold hands or move closer to each other, especially those onboard!

It's just the way it is. :-$

 

Is it banging your Girlfriend in the subs between Carrog and Glyn on a Midso0mers day while listening to the sound of a Great Western Hall ?

Or have I got it wrong again

Doooh....

 

A Hall? How disgusting! [smilie=to funny.gif]

 

Unfortunately the Llangollen website is still down. I was wondering how long it takes to travel between Carrog and Glyndiddleyduffry.

Maybe it is three minutes.... :-#

46118

 

For me the sound of a King climbing the Devon Banks. Awesome!

FC

 

Nowt wrong with a quickie

Just don't get caught in public

 

...Moving swiftly on, I suggest that the "romance" of steam is two things, firstly a steam locomotive "in steam" is alive, it is warm, and it usually has steam oozing from here and there. Even at rest, it has character.
Secondly, more than with a diesel or electric, a steam locomotive displays in sound and movement the effort being expended to move its train. The trailing exhaust has an impact on the landscape through which the train is passing.

Probably a lot more complicated than that, but there you have a start.

46118

 

Would 9017 in BR Black make you feel better

 

If you have to ask the question, I doubt if any of us would be able to explain it in a way for you to understand. Then again, I have often wondered myself whilst shoveling out the ashpit or cleaning the pit sump.

 

According to my dictionary 'romance' is either;

a)' a pleasurable feeling of excitement and wonder'
b) 'a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement and remoteness from everyday life!'

Either definition works for me, but the 2nd could rightly be applied to some 'personalities' on this board !

 

Cleaning out ash pans is often a favourite moment of mine to wonder what the heck i am doing there. The romance of steam i would say is the enjoyment factor that keeps us turning up, travlling many miles spending money for no return as a job volunteer or jsut a bystander.
For me persoanlly the rommance of steam is occasions like putting the V2 through her last steam test, lighting up 60007 on new years day and being one of the first to drive the new A1. Its also climbing into Goathland up the 1-49 and getting the firing right and then leaning out and seeing the many faces of awe wonderment and pleasure that you have brought them.

Steam is a public spectacle that unites many peoples regardless of social standing and background, there nothing quite like it.

 

Now would that be the original timing as recommended by papal decree in certain circumstances or the secondary timimg based on the premise that what goes in must come out - but fails to identify the direction of travel ?

 

Why British people like steam locomotives is something that has been attempted to be explained before but never with much clarity. I think it is part of our national character to be attracted to something as idiosyncractic and mysterious as a steam locomotive. It reflects back something we see in ourselves; the expert handiwork of the locomotive's driver and fireman, the skill and dedication of the engineers who built and maintained her and the application of the artist who painted her. They offer a mystical, spiritual belief in life that we do not get from many other things.

A few lines of Orwell are appropriate here, these are from 'The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius' though I feel the word English can be transposed to Scots, Welsh and Irish alike:

'When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad theeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single indentifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six millions individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Grat North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pintables in the Soho pubs, the old maids biking to Holy Communinion through the mists of the autumn morning - all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scence. How can one mkae a pattern out of this muddle?

But talk to foriegners, read foriegn books or newspapers, and you are brough back to the same though. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in the English civilisation. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sunday, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillarboxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature.'

Written for another generation in another time but I feel the 'romance of steam' falls into what Orwell considers our national characteristics. The steam locomotive is part of the national conscience, just look at Tornado's reception at Kings Cross last week or the effect 46115 had on those who watched her on the S&C. It is a British as strawberry jam and test cricket.

Perhaps it explains why we are still fascinated with, drawn to, and appreciative of, man's finest machine.

 

I find its the first 5 mins of waking up at 4:30 in the morning all cold to think , i could be in bed like normal people and like you , under the engine , cleaning out the ash pan with a wind going stirght into your face ....

I think the romance of steam is differant for everyone , but i must admit , i always have found something that needs taming with a fire in its belly and the sheer noise of an engine at full cry to be quite romantic. Maybe thiers two types of romance ? the type were its all chilled out with a loved one with quite music in the back ground and then the steam locomotive , a loud living breathing machine.