Chapter 4
Steam between History and Landscape

The steam engine: one of the very few aspects of railway that always fascinates the ordinary traveller; you can just see how the simple presence of a steam engine in a station focuses the attention of all people around.

But steam is something more than a picturesque thing: steam is first of all a sign of history; observing a steam engine is reading again and understanding the history of the last two centuries; it is facing what historians call a document. The steam engine has not only been the symbol of the industrial revolution: it has been its means, its necessary condition. Even in the anomalous situation of Italy, where the industrial revolution arrived quite late and, on the contrary, the main glories of railway belong to the electric technology, the steam engine remains the ancestor of modern mobility.

Two or three decades have passed, in which no regular service has been hauled by steam engines: we can ask what is the meaning of photographing steam locos, if we necessarily have to turn towards special trains. I do not want to think of it as of a search for a "historical fake". Simply I would call it a photography melting invention with history, where the steam engine is revealed again, it comes back into the present life; and photography reinterprets its adventure, helps in learning its features.