In Search of Steam: 12 of the World's Classic Trains

Until it closed in 1983, there was a 2-foot-6-inch-gauge system some 250 miles north of Rio de Janeiro known as the VFCO (Viação Férrea Centro-Oeste). At one point the railway's route exceeded 450 miles, but by 1981 it had shrunk to about 130, based in the town of Sao Joao del Rei.

The big draw for the steam enthusiast was a gorgeous fleet of Baldwin 4-4-0s, 2-8-0s, and 4-6-0s with painted smokeboxes and polished brass. Nos. 55 and 69, photographed at São João sheds in November 1981, were 2-8-0s built in 1892 and 1894, respectively.

To reach the summit of the Cumbres Pass, in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, at 10,015 feet above sea level, trains of the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad have to tackle some fierce gradients. One of the steepest climbs happens where the track runs through a cleft in the mountains, known as the Narrows. The gradient here is 1 in 25, a 4 percent grade in American parlance. In this June 1990 photo, class K-36 Nos. 488 and 489 burst out of the Narrows bound for the top of the pass.

The most scenic of Cuban sugar lines were those at the Rafael Freyre mill toward the eastern end of the island. Here one could watch Baldwin 2-8-0s hauling rakes of loaded cane through lush tropical countryside. The length of some of the trains was amazing given the gauge, the relative size of the locomotives, and the gradients.

On some of the steepest parts of the line, it was not uncommon for a train to take two or three tries to get to the top of the climb. Here, a train of loaded wagons nears the mill in March 2000.

On New Year's Day in 1999, one of the famous B Class locomotives of India's Darjeeling Himalayan Railway nears Ghum with a train from Kurseong to Darjeeling. It's a long, steep, and tortuous climb from the plains at Siliguri to the summit of the DHR. The railway rises 7000 feet in a little under 50 miles before dropping down into Darjeeling.

Sadly, the steam locos are showing their age. Despite tender, loving care, they are limited in the number of carriages they can pull. Today, diesels are in charge of the through trains to and from Darjeeling, landslides and washouts permitting.

Amman, the capital of Jordan, is on the Hedjaz Railway, a line made famous by Lawrence of Arabia's exploits in World War I. The hillside overlooking this viaduct in Amman's suburbs provided a convenient vantage point for photographing a special tourist train in September 2008. It wasn't that many years ago that this was an open vista, but Amman has spread at an amazing speed partly because of an influx of refugees from other parts of the Middle East.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Myanmar (Burma) was an unlikely place to find everyday steam, yet they ran here until all of the remaining operational locomotives were withdrawn in 2008. Happily, I joined a steam tour of Burma in January 2007—another couple of years and it would have been too late.

Burma was once part of the British Empire, so it's no surprise, therefore, that the country's remaining steam locomotives were of British designs. Class YD 2-8-2 No. 970 was photographed near Thephyugon. Built in 1949, she was one of a number of locos supplied by the U.K. to replace stock lost in World War II.

China's Jitong railway was constructed in the early 1990s and opened for traffic at the end of 1995. Taking its name from the towns at the two ends of the line, Jining and Tongliao, it runs about 600 miles west to east across Inner Mongolia. It seems incredible that China built this line with steam engines in mind, but until 2000 there wasn't a diesel to be seen. From that year on, however, diesels began to make inroads until steam was finally eliminated in 2005.

This was the place to witness steam power at maximum effort, and the railway soon became a mecca for photographers. The curved viaduct at Si Mingyi on the climb from the west was probably the most-frequented location on the pass. If the sun was out, it was almost impossible not to get a good shot of an ascending train. Here, two unidentified QJs lift a train in October 1997.

The last steam engines ran on South African Railways in the early 1990s. Fortunately, the authorities began cooperating with charter groups by providing locos and stock to re-create scenes from the steam era. One such “steam safari” was the Drakensberg Farewell Railtour, which ran for two weeks in July 1995. No. 3410 Paula makes a splendid sight near De Brug with a train on the secondary mainline from Kimberly to Bloemfontein.

New Zealand is a civilized place to enjoy railways, with familiar food, excellent wines, and old-fashioned (in the best sense of the term) courtesy and hospitality. Here, Class Ab Pacific No. 778 is seen departing from Kingston, South Island, in October 1991. Built in the New Zealand Railway's own workshops in 1925 to a gauge of 3 feet 6 inches, this machine was a magnificent sight. Sadly, at the time of writing, the future of this particular steam operation appeared to be in doubt.

Narrow-gauge lines near Dresden, Germany, survived in large parts because of the relatively low standard of living during the Communist era. Private car ownership was for the few. The state railways were keen to divest themselves of their narrow-gauge operations after the unification of East and West Germany; those that remain are run by private companies. The 10-mile line from Radebeul to Radeburg starts in the suburbs of Dresden but soon reaches open countryside. The first crossing station is Friedewald, where in October 2004 No. 99.713 was photographed arriving with a train to Radeburg.

After the dissolution of the USSR, an enterprising entrepreneur in Ukraine acquired a complete train of coaches that he hired out to photographic groups from the West. One such group chartered the train in September 1994 for a week's travel using a number of different steam locos. As the train included sleeping cars and a restaurant car, we lived on it for the whole week.

Class SO (CO in the Cyrillic alphabet) was named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who was a close friend of Stalin's. With a 2-10-0 wheel arrangement, the class was intended for freight traffic. No. 17-4371 was photographed near Pukov en route to Berezovitza.

Crowcombe Heathfield is a quintessential English country station and a personal favorite (I'm a volunteer signalman there on what is now one of the U.K.'s premier heritage railways). No. 4160, a Prairie tank locomotive, arrives with an afternoon train from Bishops Lydeard in August 1995.