No future generation would experience the thrill enjoyed by its predecessors. No future American could stand awed beside the track and behold the majestic onrush of the iron horse, be deafened by the blast of the exhaust, the crash and clatter of steel on steel, and the hiss of escaping steam, or be momentarily shaken as the locomotive thundered past in a blurred flash of connecting rods, valve mechanism, and pounding wheels. No child at night would ever again awaken to the eerie echo of a far-off steam whistle crying at a lonely crossing, or by day look out from a hillside at the long white plume of steam that marked a distant train charging down the valley below. The present generation of Americans can gaze back upon these things with nostalgia. The next will never know them. Here and there a steam engine will be saved, but the people of a different era will note them and quickly pass on, wondering. Only a few will pause to marvel and ponder over the development of the steam locomotive. It is to the everlasting credit of our forebears that some few examples and relics of the early engines have been preserved; and the appearance of this study of them, coming in the final hour of the steam locomotive, is most appropriate. The author has gone to painstaking lengths to find and sift and bring together the most complete record ever compiled of these examples and relics remaining of the earliest of North American railway engines and of working replicas of them. Students of locomotive and railroad history are familiar with the almost impossible task confronting the researcher who undertakes to trace the history of early engines. The contemporary account is often a will-o’-the-wisp pursued endlessly through the yellowed pages of century-old newspapers and books; the seemingly authentic fragment of fact is found to be faulty just when it seems flawlessly correct; the colorful description of some ephemeral engine of the past just cannot be reconciled with contemporary accounts and finally proves to have been prepared long afterward, replete with the inaccuracies which most unfortunately result from the inroads made by time upon the recollections of the most careful observer. Through all this confusing maze the author step by step has made his way, the result being a most noteworthy and valuable contribution to the literature of the steam locomotive. To students of its history, to the vast body of railway enthusiasts all over the world, and to those generally interested in the development of mechanical industry and transportation, this work must appeal as unique and one that will be long remembered. THOMAS NORRELL _July 1955_ Silver Spring, Maryland Remaining Relics and Operable Replicas Representing the First Quarter-Century Of Steam Locomotives in North America