The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825-1925 [antikvár]

J; orewora Of all those who worship at the shrine of the steam locomotive there has never been one more devout and more learned than the late E. L. Ahrons. He not only showed for the history of the locomotive that enthusiasm which characterises your true historian, but he brought to it, also, a degree of technical knowledge higher than is to be found in many of those who have surrendered themselves to the fascination of that subject. He received his early training as an engineer at Swindon, and although his subsequent career was spent mainly in other fields of engineering, his early love for locomotives never left him. He maintained, moreover, to the last a close touch with technical progress, and his boo\ " The Development of British Locomotive Design," issued in several editions by the Locomotive Publishing Company, is still a familiar worf{ of reference amongst locomotive men. His greatest wor\ was undoubtedly the series of articles which he was commissioned to write for The Engineer in celebration of the Railway Centenary. No one who was not in touch with him, as the present writer was, during the preparation of those articles can have any conception of the WQr\ he put into them, and the extraordinary care he too^ to verify every point. It did not matter how small the hint or how trivial the enquiry; if it could help at all he pursued it to the last, and he wrote a veritable volume of letters as well as the series itself. It must be freely admitted that the exigencies of the Press hampered him a little. To begin with, when he and I together schemed out the series it became evidejit that unless some limit was put to it, it would extend beyond reasonable bounds. We had, therefore, to decide to omit all the early history— that is, the history prior to 182^—and to condense strictly all history 7nore recent than igoo. Moreover, when the articles came in they were crowded with illustrations, and I found it imperative to ma\e certain omissions. I should li{e to say here in memory of an old friend that tiever, in the course of the whole transaction, did we have a difficult word together. He \new, I hope, that I regretted omissiojis as much as he did, but he invariably cheerfully acquiesced, and always indicated what could be left out with least injury to the history. Never^and I thin{ Mr. Bell, of the Locomotive Publishing Company, will agree with me in this—was there an author who was more ready to see the Editor s point of view.