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The Trains

The steam locomotives are not dead; they have gone to make their most wonderful trip : that of souvenir... Souvenirs, souvenirs (as Johnny Hallyday sang)... I have been alive for more than 60 years and many things have changed. For instance the trains. Not better. They have become common and insipid... They run faster but don't still arrive by the hour. In the stations it 's often heard : "Kindly apologize us for our delââây !". OK stop, let's change course and speak of the good things concerning the trains. I'm in Paris in the 50s, on a road bridge over a truly large railways place.
Here and there a few courageous steam engines, proud and haughty. Can I recognize a Mountain P 241 nearly as high-performance as an electric engine? Maybe I'll have the opportunity to watch close to me the unique Baltic 232 U1, built by the engineer Marc de Caso, or more again the extraordinary Niagara 242 A1, the most powerful machine in Europe (6000 HP), the masterpiece of the great thermodynamicist André Chapelon?
I also perceive some modest diesel engines pulling tandem because of their restricted strength. At last, here are the fabulous electric engines, magnificent symbols of the modernism, but discreet in spite of their admitted power.
All those locomotives are the honourable ancestors of the present trains, surely less poetic for me, but famous makers of dreams for the children of today.
(copyright Jean-Michel Cagnon)