I remember being gob-smacked years ago by the most stunning black and white steam photography taken by Canada’s Nils Huxtable. Not too many coffee table books come out in black and white – mostly colour these days. However, there is just something wonderful about viewing steam pictures in the black and white medium and it was this same sentiment that has prompted Hloben to put out a new book in this very medium.

A follow-up to his colour presentation Steam Passion, Hloben’s 176-page, hard cover Steam Encounters is in a landscape format. His photographic coverage – on glossy paper – embraces steam locomotives in a variety of contexts; from attendant personnel in the lonely dead of night minding the newly-lit fire for a steam run the next day to the glitz, glamour and clamour of such day-time steam operations and the myriad photographing paparazzi taking up various vantage points for that potential “great shot”.

The capturing in black and white of the contemporary steam scene has been afforded primarily by the clubs Reefsteamers and Friends of The Rail. These two clubs’ locomotives are caught through Hloben’s, and others’, lenses on atmospheric sheds and sunrise and sunset line operations. The Reefsteamers’ operations have afforded photos to be taken on one of South Africa’s most scenic lines, the Bethlehem-Bloemfontein section.  Hloben has pulled in veteran South African photographer Mike Wright to supply a wealth of steam shots from decades back before the word “preservation” was even banded around and such a thought was seriously contemplated as yet.

Wright’s evocative photos provide the black and white images of the big locomotives of the old SAR – the class 25 Condensors and the mighty GL Garratt, for instance.

Paul Hloben has captured not only the steam engines in all their glory, but as I said the personalities who undertake the hard physical work of preparing their steeds – greasing, watering, fire-lighting, cleaning fire, polishing and shoveling, not just the glitterati of driving them on the day and waving to the plethora of camera-clicking aficionados.

Steam Encounters is indeed a novel, worthy addition to one’s “railway library” by virtue of its broad content undertaken in a medium of yesteryear – black-and-white images bringing out the very best of South Africa’s diverse classes of steam locos.

Steam Encounters – Lingering Whispers of The South African Locomotive’s Story

ISBN 978-0-620-50286-3

First Edition 2011 – 30cm x 22cm

Published by Rexxon Publishing

Bryanston, South Africa

Contact details:  +27 (0) 83 269 0667