Steam on the Main North

81 class Locomotives of New South Wales - Australian Trains

Too cold to breathe? The Mocănița exhales anyway, a hulking paragraph of iron and rivets writing itself into winter air. The locomotive does not glide, it advances by appetite, coughing smoke like an old philosopher clearing his throat before confessing a truth. Snow listens. Trees hold their breath. Steam flowers briefly, then dies, as fragile as conviction. This engine was never designed for beauty, yet it manufactures it relentlessly. Coal burns. Pistons wrestle gravity. Water mutates into we