The following are the last two stanzas of a poem about the demise of steam locomotives written by the late Keith Tyler, originally published in Black Eight, the magazine of the Stanier 8F Locomotive Society, in 1978 and reproduced by permission of that society's Editor.
Recollected In Tranquillity
Now almost all are gone,so many gone, altogether unrepresented,
and the struggle in the stormy hills
or through the sun-drenched pastures superseded
by newer traction.
But we few that remain,
bound like so many invalids
to humiliating restriction - for our own good -
find new care,
more warming perhaps than ever,
painstakingly cosseted, nursed,
revalued and retubed, hear strange
sophisticated footplate raillery,
hot loyalties and counter claims
in relative retirement,
are tended with dogged skill
and unyielding, ageless devotion . . .
Are we not lucky, we, the few who survive?