"As a child, David Plowden was given an inexpensive box camera and before long he began to photograph railroad trains. As he matured and started on what would become a lifetime in photography, trains -- specifically steam locomotives -- continued to be one of his passions. But by the beginning of the 1960s they were eclipsed by diesel engines; the steam era had ended. It is our good fortune that Plowden was passionate about trains. For years he photographed not only the locomotives but all facets of the railroad world, from long steam-powered freight trains crisscrossing middle America to the yards, small stations, and industrial settings that are synonymous with trains. While his photographic love affair with America, and in particular the mid-West where he lives, resulted in many books and exhibitions of his beautiful documentary photographs, he never lost sight of the railroads, where his work would result in the images presented in this book, a reverent tribute and requiem for the era of steam. David Plowden is the author of more than twenty photography books, including Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photography, published by Norton. As a young man out of college he worked on the Great Northern Railroad in Minnesota, and when the opportunity presented itself, he photographed trains. Later, as he became increasingly well known in the world of photography, he continued to document the railroad world but it was not the same. The exhilaration of a steam locomotive thundering down the track was gone. It lives on in this book"--P. [2] of dust jacket.