I must admit Steam Engines do look and sound something special, although I have been told they are far harder to maintain etc :-?
There's also the fact that you can just shovel black stuff out of the ground and into the boiler and you have transport. I wonder what would have happened to our infrastructure during WWII if we'd already made the move to diesel / electric trains?
Kevin
You cant on a steam train sadly.....rather loads of maintenance!
I don't dispute that but the point I was making is that they made us self-sufficient in terms of moving troops and materials around to an extent that we probably wouldn't have been if we'd moved on from steam.
The first thing that would be targeted in a wartime scenario would be imports of oil and gas and the second would be the electrical supply infrastructure. We need these to run trains.
Inefficient and labour intensive though they are by modern standards, if you have a serviceable steam locomotive, some track and coal and water, you have transport. You might have to throw manpower at maintaining them (and in practice locomotives were neglected during the war), but is that as scarce a commodity as imported energy in a wartime scenario?
Kevin