THE END OF THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE

One of the last great British steam locomotives, attaining the ultimate perfection as a complete piece of steam machinery, is shown by the acknowledged 'railway' artist Terence Cuneo in his painting of the L.N.E.R. Pacific Mallard, (left) which achieved a record top speed of 126 m.p.h (203kph) in 1938. Here the Mallard with its beautifully streamlined shape is depicted travelling at about one hundred miles an hour.

The American painter Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) was one of the twentieth-century heirs of the nineteenth-century luminist painters. He was a member of a group known as the Immaculates or Precisionists, which we can understand when we look at one of his most famous paintings Rolling Power, 1939, (right). This is a remarkably accurate portrayal of the steam cylinder, valve gear, connecting rods and driving wheels on a great American steam locomotive. While photographic in its detail Sheeler by concentrating his view on the steam-driven machinery produces an almost abstract pattern symbolising power.

With the invention of the internal combustion engine in the late 19th century and the development of electricity distribution powering electric motors in the early 20th century, the new diesel and electric locomotives soon made the complex and inefficient steam locomotives with their pollution obsolete.