Dimensions
162 x 241 x 36mm
From Jonathan Glancey, the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of Spitfire: The Biography, comes his new bestseller telling the incredible story of the last days of the great steam locomotives.
Jonathan Glancey is a lifelong steam enthusiast who has oiled, fired and driven, as well as watched and listened to, steam locomotives around the world. In Giants of Steam, he turns his enthusiastic and knowledgeable attention to the thrilling story of the last, and greatest, generation of steam railway locomotives in regular main line service. Designed and built chiefly by the railways and workshops of Britain, France, Germany and the United States, these powerful and beautifully designed machines would take steam locomotive technology to new heights set against a backdrop of the political upheavals and military conflicts of the mid twentieth century.
A celebration of the last great days of steam, Giants of Steam also commemorates the dedicated and often charismatic engineers who designed and built these effective and emotive machines and put them to use. And he shows what happened as they faced up to the challenge of modernization and the notion that steam is inherently old fashioned and dirty.
A story of invention, skill and passion, Giants of Steam reveals how the true advocates of steam's glory days pushed its design and performance to remarkable limits.