Siegfried Fischer

Colour photographs from the final years of West German steam. The procession of Einheitslokomotiven - the standardised classes 01, 03, 42, 44, 50, 52, 64 and 86, predominantly from the 1930s - is leavened by occasional rarities surviving from the pre-World War I era and some of the last gasps of steam in the form of the new steam engines briefly built by the Bundesbahn - classes 10, 23, 65 and 82. There is a brief glimpse of the West German narrow gauge, which was definitely on its last legs in the 1960s; and the book ends with scenes from the major repair works at Braunschweig, which was repairing steam engines well into the 1970s. Photographs have been well, if not always spectacularly, selected and the reproduction is good. My copy is from the 3rd edition, published in 1983; those wanting a representative collection from the closing years of West German steam would do well to seek this book out.… (meer)