AI at it Again. Leitz Elmar 50mm

Some weeks back, I bought an AI software package which is able to bring old photographs taken on film to life by extrapolating the information inherent in the image, and enhancing it.
I took this photograph in April 1976 at the little town of Ashton in South Africa's Western Cape Province.  The goods train had paused on its journey to pick up some extra wagons in a siding.  It was a late Saturday afternoon in the Southern Hemisphere's autumn.  The light was starting to fade, and it accentuated in a striking way, the folds in the mountains behind the locomotive.  I have battled for years to bring those folds out without  obscuring other detail.  AI has made it possible.  Unfortunately, all I had to work with was a little 3x5 print, so there are other technical problems, but the overall image conveys what I saw through the viewfinder, and I'm delighted to bring it to life again in the digital age.
A word about the locomotive, #4118, long-since scrapped:  It was a Class GMAM Garratt, one of a batch of 120 locomotives put into service by the South African Railways from 1954-1958. This is what Wiki has to offer.  The Garratt design is brilliant: two steam locomotives in one really, sharing an enormous boiler slung between two sets of driving wheels. This concept enables lots of weight, and thus adhesion and tractive force, to be spread out over a great length of lightly-laid track, and because the two driving units articulate independently of each other, the locomotive can traverse sharp curves easily.  South Africa's railways were built on the cheap: steep gradients, sharp curves and lightly-laid track.  The Garratt design is perfectly suited for these operating conditions.  From Operating's perspective, there is one driver and one fireman to control, essentially two locomotives - a win-win.  Since water is a scarce commodity in large areas of South Africa, the Garratts were permanently coupled to an auxiliary water tanker - complete with its own headlamp - to increase their operating range; this is visible in the foreground.  As an Extra, I've added an image taken some years later on the wild and mysterious Hex River Pass, of sister Class GMAM #4072 in full cry attacking the 1:40 grade.