Steam Heaven Past. Leitz Elmar 50mm

Today was another one of those work days best consigned to memory's trash can.  I came home Blipless, so I'm defying the Blip gods yet again with this glimpse from the past.

I took this photograph in December 1978 in Grahamstown, South Africa.  This rather remarkable miniature university city is situated in a valley which was penetrated by the railway in 1879.  The alignment included some of the steepest gradients on any line in South Africa.  Consequently, it made for very dramatic photography as some of the last steam locomotives (in regular daily use anywhere in the world at that time) battled to bring heavy trains up the hills and out of the valley to join the mainline at Alicedale Junction.  My aunt and uncle (Crispin25's parents) lived in Grahamstown and every winter vacation was for me a visit to paradise watching and photographing the steam locomotives as they came and went, sometimes ten or fifteen a day.  This is a Class 19D locomotive and, although I don't know its number, it is possible to identify it as one of a series of 20 ordered from the Krupp Locomotive Works in 1937.  For some reason unknown, the locos of this series were supplied with domeless boilers.  The locomotives at the Grahamstown depot were assigned to regular crews who kept them beautifully clean, bulled up and tricked out - hence the "bathing beauties" on the smokebox door...
I spent some time working on this photograph trying to get the colors right.  It was taken on High Speed Ektachrome and scanned from a Cibachrome print.  Regrettably I no longer own the fabulous lens used: it was traded in 1984 for my wonderful Summicron 50mm which is faster, but it would be nice to have both, just 'cause.