"The willing servant" : a history of the steam locomotive / David Ross.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ancestry and beginnings -- Coming of age -- Trials and triumphs -- The basics confirmed -- Pushing out frontiers -- Adjustments to the nervous system -- Engineers and aesthetics -- Gauges and growing pains -- Mid-century perceptions -- Coke, coal, culm, logs, bagasse and oil -- The need for growth -- But how do you make it stop? -- Magniloquence and minimalism -- Compounding -- The racing years -- Superheating -- A hundred years on -- Imperial and royal -- 'Great things were expected' -- Big boilers -- Across tundra, veldt and pampas -- 'Foreign devils' fire carts' -- Engines of the imagination -- Bigger engines -- Express elegance -- The search for super-power -- Getting away from Stephenson -- The Standardisers -- Record breakers -- The iconic locomotive -- On the footplate -- The biggest engines -- A sort of zenith -- A consideration of chimneys -- War engines -- Post-war engines.