Aaaaaahhhhhh.

Is it just me or have your cares, too, just drifted away with the exhaust?

It may one day be possible to travel at warp factor nine but what will be the point of living in a hermetically sealed recycled environment, within which the travellers have no sensation of going anywhere, for those who thrive on the stimulus of travel? If all one can see upon arrival is that which can be seen on a screen from an armchair why bother travelling at all? Why not spend the cost of travel on stimulating things that have been brought the other way? Steam engines are beautiful things and, like their brash, ASBO deserving, parvenu cousins the diesels, they talk to those of their masters with the sensitivity to hear. Electric traction may reduce the cost of hauling x units of weight y units of distance, leaving lineside crops unburnt and summer frocks unsmudged while sacrificing diabolical carbon smuts to the wind gods of a much higher altitude many miles away, and electric traction may reduce the cost of track maintenance and the time allowed to a very important area manager to compose and rehearse his excuse to his more important superior, him or more often these days her, self a subordinate of a much more subordinate important superior; it may require less maintenance and far less cleaning; it may be controllable from a control box in Mumbai, or Mumbo Jumbo or Mambo or Bombay or Bumboy or Bimbo or Bambi or whatever that place is known as, by an 'agent' eager to work for a chappatti and a chicken balti with rice per day and a chance to improve his, or more commonly these days her, limited English language skills, it cannot reproduce, notwithstanding the wonders of information communication technology, the unspoken conversation between the mechanical steel servant and her bonded human master.

Steam engines are beautiful things and they speak to me because I was taught to listen. As I learned to listen I heard the stoically muted moans and groans of those dying because they had no choice but to give themselves up to the demands of those who owned the steam engines, and every other source of power, and I came quickly to understand both the attraction of labour saving devices and to realise that electricity will be the god of the working classes until the god of capital manages to create another source of wealth and slavery, and electrical consumption will be the pious devotion of the working classes until the the capital manipulating classes manage to propitiate the god of capital by exploiting another novel source of power.

And that's why the working classes sell their souls to those who promise them labour saving devices and the middling classes (those who work without labouring) willingly turn out to labour on those days they need not work.

I love steam engines. I delight in the shape, sound and smell of them and I know why those who were masters of them, while serving them, described them in the feminine. As beautiful as they were they were bloody hard work and, as much fun as they are, everyone wants the rest from labour that allows the development of the mind rather than the muscles, and therein lies the rub.

Anyone who has ever shovelled anything for hours at a time from economic necessity, as I have, will agree that a job is much better done by an electric motor and a silicon chip, and you can stuff the environment, which is probably why most believers in the existence of the NWO fear eugenics.

Clan Line

I've always thought the rebuilt Bulleids marginally more attractive than the air smoothed versions and as a baby, a toddler and a schoolboy (not a 'student') who was born and lived not so very far from the Chatham mainline it's more than likely that I saw a few before steam locomotive traction was discontinued on the Southern Region of BR. There were no locomotives anywhere in the world as elegant as English locomotives, nor as powerful for a given output per ton against the load hauled.

Chortle

Well it made me chuckle, and I have the house to myself for the evening.

Here's The Onion on Obama and turkeys:

What A Beauty

I doubt there's a woman on the planet as beautiful as that A4. Why do men love machines more than women? Because machines do whatever is asked of them without needing constant reassurance, and regular maintenance with a few simple tools and a quick wipe with an oily rag is all they need to look their best. Perhaps that's why women hate machines almost as much as they hate men.