History Main / SteamNeverDies

* ''WesternAnimation/Thomas and the Magic Railroad'': The train Lily boards in the big city uses century-old passenger coaches pulled by a 1906 steam locomotive (the Rainbow Sun from Shining Time Station). Shining Time appears to exist in "our world," yet it still uses steam engines for everyday passenger rail.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasandtheMagicRailroad'': The train Lily boards in the big city uses century-old passenger coaches pulled by a 1906 steam locomotive (the Rainbow Sun from Shining Time Station). Shining Time appears to exist in "our world," yet it still uses steam engines for everyday passenger rail.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasandtheMagicRailroad": The train Lily boards in the big city uses century-old passenger coaches pulled by a 1906 steam locomotive (the Rainbow Sun from Shining Time Station). Shining Time appears to exist in "our world," yet it still uses steam engines for everyday passenger rail.

* "WesternAnimation/Thomas and the Magic Railroad": The train Lily boards in the big city uses century-old passenger coaches pulled by a 1906 steam locomotive (the Rainbow Sun from Shining Time Station). Shining Time appears to exist in "our world," yet it still uses steam engines for everyday passenger rail.

* "WesternAnimation/ThomasandtheMagicRailroad": The train Lily boards in the big city uses century-old passenger coaches pulled by a 1906 steam locomotive (the Rainbow Sun from Shining Time Station). Shining Time appears to exist in "our world," yet it still uses steam engines for everyday passenger rail.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado LNER Peppercorn Class A1 60163]], named ''Tornado'', is the first all-new steam locomotive built in the United Kingdom since 1960, built to the same specification as the rest of the Class A1 locomotives that preceded it. While it's mostly seen on heritage railtours, there have been times where its assistance has been required, such as [[https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2019/09/steam-locomotive-60163-tornado-comes-to-the-rescue-in-doncaster.html hauling broken down trains clear of the line]] and [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8428097.stm rescuing passengers stranded by heavy snowfall]]! After 14 years of service, it's currently receiving a routine overhaul as of 2022, but it's only a matter of time until ''Tornado'' heads back out onto the mainline to continue its adventures.

* ''Literature/{{Franklin}}'' seems to take place in a bizarre universe where certain old-fashioned things (such as Franklin and his friends going to an old-style one-room schoolhouse, older-style automobiles frequently in use, etc.) co-exist alongside certain modern things (such as 90s-style desktop computers, and Franklin and his friends going to said "li'l schoolhouse" on a modern school bus). One of said old-fashioned things is the trains using steam locomotives, fashioned off the types used from the 1920s to the 1940s.

* Justified in ''Film/AtlasShrugged'' Part II. Taggart Rails keeps a steam engine handy, expecting to run into troubles with the more-modern trains they have. Especially when {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s a-plenty make it harder and harder for the trains to run at all, in a greedy power grab. This is ''after'' a gross mismanagement of other resources has led to a need to pay the bills that requires energy taxes on virtually every form a transportation ''other'' than the rails. Which results in gas going up to $42 a gallon and crippling the road system.
** Made worse by the fact that John Galt begins abducting / recruiting / whatever all the bright minds that the government had been extorting, forcing said government officials to showcase their incompetence even further with no bright minds to shift the blame to when something goes wrong.
* The Red Triangle Circus Gang ride a steam train through Gotham City in ''Film/BatmanReturns'', in keeping with the "mix-and-match" time frame of the ''Batman'' films and Creator/TimBurton's films in general.

** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since the East German Railways used steam engines in line service until 1988

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' usually avoids this, and whenever trains are shown they tend to be modern diesel or electric trains. However, in the short "Camp Pikachu", the freight train the Pichu Brothers are hitchhiking on is pulled by a steam engine.

[[folder: Newspaper Comics]]
* A lampshaded aversion in ''ComicStrip/PheobeAndHerUnicorn'':

'''Pheobe''': Right? It's ''weird'' that it was just, like, an Amtrak.

* The title ''WesternAnimation/DinosaurTrain'' is a green steam locomotive shaped like a Triceratops head that's powered by coal, a [[StealthPun fossil fuel.]]

** The Crab Orchard and Egyptian Railway similarly refused to give up on steam locomotives, running their fleet in regular train service until 1986 when the last steam engine operating on the line suffered damage which was to costly to repair. Many consider the Crab Orchard's end of steam to be the ''true'' ending of traditional steam railroading in America.

* The Denver and Rio Grande Western, a network which ran from New Mexico, Colorado and into Utah; was ''quick'' to retire steam on its mainline routes due to the high desert it ran through. An exception to this was the San Juan Extension, a worn out narrow gauge line from Alamosa to Durango, with two main branches to Silverton, Colorado and Farmington, New Mexico. The narrow gauge line was simply antiquated, and the DRGW expected to be able to abandon it at short notice so it simply never bothered buying the needed narrow gauge diesels to upgrade the line. The popularity of TheWildWest genre in the 1950's brought a tourist boom to the Silverton branch, and an oil boom in Farmington required regular trains of pipe and oil drilling equipment in and out of the the region; and the DRGW soon found itself trying to balance operating both its standard gauge modernized diesel line with an antiquarian narrow gauge steam operation ''they just couldn't get rid of.''

** The original author of ''The Railway Series,'' Reverend Awdry, makes a ''point'' of enforcing this trope because he was extremely opposed to the "Dieselification" era of the British railways during the 50's and 60's; Essentially, the British government and railway companies were so intent on bringing in the new "innovative" diesel engines that they began slating all of their steam locomotives, even ones that ''just rolled out of the factory'', for scrapping. Not only was this a massive waste of money, it also became a rather embarrassing issue when the diesels turned out to be...not as reliable as they were supposed to be. This is the reason why diesels in the series were usually depicted as the bad guys (with exceptions like Mavis and [=BoCo=]) and why many of them tended to suffer from mechanical breakdowns.

** When oil train demand finally ended, the DRGW was able to abandon the lines from Farmington to Antonito and pull up the third rail for dual gauge operations between Antonito and Alamosa. The Chama to Antonito segment of the line was saved and became the "Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad" in 1971. Despite wanting to abandon ''all'' of the steam hauled narrow gauge, the Federal Government forced the Silverton Branch to remain operating for passenger trains thanks to the TouristBump it continued to receive in western movies and television. In 1980 the DRGW finally sold the steam hauled Silverton Branch to new owners who have operated it ''still'' using steam locomotives as the "Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad" ever since.[[notes]]By the 2020's a series of wildfires finally forced the Durango and Silverton to buy several large diesel locomotives as alternatives to steam power, but they haven't replaced the original steam engines yet, instead running supplemental services and are kept on standby for dry weather conditions. The steam locomotives that remain in Durango now burn oil instead of coal to reduce sparks from stray ash, and the Cumbres & Toltec has begun converting some of its steam fleet to burning oil as well.[[/notes]

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}} usually avoids this, and whenever trains are shown they tend to be modern diesel or electric trains. However, in the short "Camp Pikachu", the freight train the Pichu Brothers are hitchhiking on is pulled by a steam engine.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant'': The freight train that plows into the Giant is powered by a steam locomotive that resembles both a New York Central "Dreyfuss" steam locomotive and a Norfolk & Western J Class steam locomotive. There were no steam locomotives operating mainline freight trains in Maine in 1957, especially not from those railroads, so it's also [[JustTrainWrong Just Train Wrong]]. However, it could be forgiven, because many railroads still used steam in 1957.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* The warning sign for a level crossing without gates or barriers is a steam locomotive in [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crossing_signs#Trains many countries.]]
** There is a vaguely sensible reason for this: modern trains don't really have any kind of instantly-recognizable silhouette that makes for an obvious symbol.
** Deliberately averted in Germany: when the symbols on all traffic signs where simplified in 1992 the outdated steam locomotive had to go and was replaced by an electric multiple unit coming at you. Ironically that sign is also displayed at level crossings of preserved steam railroads.
* Some rolling stock would probably count: Wooden livestock cars used to transport animals were retired in the 1970s. The advent of automatic continuous-brake systems made cabooses (known more descriptively as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_van "brake vans"]] elsewhere) largely obsolete, but they hung on until the early 1980s when the last unbraked freight wagons were retired. In North America they also housed the train's workmen, now such trains only need just two or three people to run them. The last car on such a train nowadays is equipped with a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashing_Rear_End_Device flashing taillight]] (called a [=FRED, EOT or ETD=]) attached to the rear coupler.
** And the handpump cars: they are now replaced with special trucks that can run on rails (a sort of modern-day Galloping Goose).
** It was well into the turn of the millennium before the last 1950s-era British Rail Mk 1 coaches and the diesel and electric multiple units based on them were finally put out to pasture. Many of these coaches were originally built with heating systems designed to draw on steam from the locomotive's boiler, which resulted in the decidedly SchizoTech practice of building steam boilers into diesel locomotives to heat the coaches in winter, and it wasn't until well into the 1970s that the last of the passenger locomotive stock was converted to electric heating. It might well have been even later were it not for the [[TheAllegedCar Alleged Boilers]] - all the different designs, made by different manufacturers, were all equally unreliable,[[note]] The ones made by Stone-Vapor were ''probably'' the best but that's not saying much. The ones made by Spanner could also be good, but could also be appalling, as they had a reputation for being ''astonishingly'' inconsistent,[[/note]] and accounted for more failures than all the other parts of the locomotives put together (and some of ''them'' were [[ObviousBeta pretty bad]]). Some steam heat locomotives (reassigned to freight duties), and coaching stock with dual heating (steam and electric), remained in service for another decade or more.
** The last Cravens steam heated coaches were withdrawn from Irish Railways in 2006, drawing their steam from a boiler contained in a heating and luggage van (HLV)or a generating steam van (GSV) which also provided electricity. Some of these vans were built from old BR mk1 stock, and these have now found themselves back in the UK supplying steam and electricity to mk1 & 2 stock on heritage railtours.
*** North American rail passenger operators had similar Schizo Tech issues with steam heated coaches. As national systems, Amtrak and [=VIA=] Rail inherited their passenger car fleets from a wide variety of freight roads who each had their own ideas on how to heat and cool their coaches. Some were still using steam even in 1971! They had generally weeded these units out by the mid to late [[TheSeventies 1970's]] in favor of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-end_power Head End Power]]. Steam heat lasted until the 1990s on VIA Rail.
** Russian and Soviet trains used one (wood-fired) boiler per passenger car for decades, to allow the car to suit any type of locomotive. Many passenger cars still carry an on-board boiler, or samovar, to facilitate the re-hydration of packaged foods and tea.
* In RealLife, one can find the occasional steam train still (or again) in operation even in well developed countries, such as a tourist attraction or a [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece museum piece]]. Or sometimes they temporarily de-mothball a steam locomotive kept in reserve in case of emergency and roll it to and fro, to keep the bearings from decay.
** This is especially true in the UK, where a combination of Dr Beeching closing down a large number of railway lines and Barry scrapyard (which was one of the main locations steam engines were sent to be scrapped) being willing to wait while preservation societies got together the money to buy engines, means that there is a large number of steam run preservation lines across the country that run steam engines as a tourist attraction. Most of them have more than one working steam locomotive.
** In some places in the United States of America there are several companies or freight lines reviving steam power for a cheaper alternative to diesel/electric freight trains, in some cases they run off burning natural gas or are filled with preheated steam to run off until the steam eventually cools - this often happens near power plants or huge factories - but it doesn't appear to be [[DeadHorseTrope dead just yet]].
*** Of particular note in the USA is [[http://www.strasburgrailroad.com The Strasburg Railroad]], an actual operating short line that uses restored and preserved steam engines almost exclusively.
** While steam locomotive operations in Denmark ended in the late 60's and early 70's, both the Danish national railway company, DSB, and various preservations societies have preserved and continue to run. And as late as 2000, two steam locomotives were polished up and carried the coffin of Queen Ingrid from Copenhagen to Roskilde, where she was to be buried next to her husband, King Frederik IX. The King himself had been a RailEnthusiast, and when he died in 1972, his funeral train had been headed by a pair of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SJ_F_(steam_locomotive) DSB Class E]] steam engines per his own request.
* LongRunner boiler manufacturer [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babcock_%26_Wilcox Babcock and Wilcox]] has just released the 42nd edition of "''Steam: Its Generation and Use''", the longest continuously published engineering text of its kind in the world, the first edition of which came out in 1875. Of course, ''how'' the steam is being generated and what it is being used ''for'' would be completely unrecognizable to people just a hundred years ago. (B&W now makes boilers for ''nuclear'' applications, as well as more traditional fossil-fuel ones.)
* The Purdue University's sports team, the Boilermakers, has a steam locomotive on their team logo. This is a reference to the origins of the nickname: in the early days of [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootball college football]], Purdue is rumored to have cheated by paying workers at the local locomotive works (and others) to play for them. Purdue insists that the nickname derives from its days as a heavy-lifting engineering school, but even then, the link to steam power (what do you think they were engineering in the 1890s?) stands.
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_air_whistle Hancock Air Whistle]] was a product that enabled diesel or electric locomotives to retain the steam locomotive "sound" despite lacking the steam to drive the old style whistles. The few railroads that made use of the whistle were concerned motorists might not realize a more modern horn was a railroad warning device and/or persons living near the tracks might complain about the new horn sound.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado The LNER Peppercorn Class A1]] ''Tornado'' is a modern British steam locomotive built by railroad fans. Built following blueprints of the the formerly-extinct Peppercorn A1 steam locomotives of the late 1940's, ''Tornado'' is officially the 50th member of her class, and is fully up to specifications for running on modern railroads.
** And in a move that would make the Reverend Awdry proud, it [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8428097.stm rescued stranded passengers]] after a snowstorm disabled the third rail powering commuter trains operating out of London Victoria Station in 2009.
** In a somewhat related note, fans of ''Series/TopGear'' will notice that ''Tornado'' is the same train that was used for the Race to the North in season 13, where the ''Tornado'' (with Clarkson as one of the crew members) is pitted against a Jaguar [=XK120=] driven by James May and a Vincent Black Shadow ridden by Richard Hammond.
* There are multiple projects to follow the example of ''Tornado'' in "resurrecting" a disappeared class of engine, including the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMS_Patriot_Class_5551_The_Unknown_Warrior LMS Patriot Class]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_6800_Class_6880_Betton_Grange GWR Grange Class]], ''two different groups'' each building an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_P2 LNER Class P2]], and across the pond, a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_5550 Pennsylvania T1]] with which it is tentatively planned to [[CoolTrain break the steam-powered speed record]]. And that's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotives_of_the_21st_century#Traditional_steam just a sample]] of the projects underway.
** Oddly enough in the United States of America, a new 4-4-0 or two tends to pop up every couple of decades even in the post steam era. The Disneyland Railroad can be argued to be the start of this, building two new engines in the 1950's for the park. In the 1970's the National Park Service bought two new 4-4-0 locomotives from O'Connor Engineering (a Hollywood camera company with ties to Disney) for use at the Golden Spike site in Utah. Then in the 2010's a new company called the Kloke Locomotive Works dusted off the O'Connor plans, and built ''two more'' locomotives from them which are now used on tourist railroads. The Nevada Northern Railway has noted their first locomotive was a 4-4-0 that matches the O'Connor replica plans too, and while they haven't committed to it; the idea of building a replica of that engine has been bounced around as well.
* In Russia, some steam locomotives and maintenance infrastructure for them is still kept mothballed for use in case of wartime power/oil shortages. [[https://oktzd.ru/vehicle/6065/ Some steam locomotives]] are still in commercial operation.
* The UK kept building new steam locomotives well into the 1960s while most of Europe was going over to diesel or electric locomotives, mostly out of economic necessity. Oil had to be expensively shipped in from overseas, and overhead electrification required a huge up-front investment that was completely off the table in the early days of [[UsefulNotes/NationalRail British Rail]]; what hadn't been wrecked by German bombs had been run ragged supporting the war effort. But what Britain ''did'' have was plenty of coal. Some initial plans projected that steam would last into the 1980s.
* Some Youtube {{Rail Enthusiast}}s have informally campaigned for [[Series/DirtyJobs Mike Rowe]] to visit a heritage railway and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1kvCKT9bl4 clean out a steam engine.]] In other words, to show part of the reason ''why'' steam died out.
* Many countries have steam specials, which are special trains pulled by a steam engines on main lines as a special event.
* The idea of reintroducing steam locomotives, built to modern standards using modern technology, is occasionally talked about as a solution to steadily increasing oil prices. However, most people proposing these reintroductions forget or neglect to take into account that no matter how efficient ''the engine itself is'', steam-powered engines require twice the amount of infrastructure - they have to be supplied with water ''and'' fuel. The supposed cost-effectiveness is negated, especially in arid regions where water is in very short supply. Electrification is generally agreed upon to be the better solution.
** They also forget a couple of other important points. One, that the steam engine depended on the availability of large numbers of people willing to do dirty jobs for little money, and they aren't around any more. Two, that the thermal efficiency was appalling, and not susceptible to improvement. Innumerable devices to improve efficiency were tried, but the invariable result was that the efficiency gain was small, while the maintenance requirements increased enormously, and it just wasn't worth it; the same would still apply to any new-design locomotive. In effect, not only does Steam Never Die, but ''The Rocket'' never died - the failure of any change to that basic design meant that even the latest and most advanced steam locomotives were still recognizably just ''The Rocket'' writ large.
** There is another aspect: While coal is indeed more plentiful than liquid fuels and coal ''cannot'' be used for internal propulsion engines (Rudolf Diesel initially intended his engine for coal dust - neither he nor any of his successors could get it to work), however, Coal can be converted into liquid fuel via the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process Fischer Tropsch process]] which has been known since the 1920s. While its energy efficiency is ''atrocious'', it is still more than made up for by the better fuel efficiency of internal combustion compared to steam. Indeed, many countries that for one reason or another had no access to oil used exactly this process, be it Apartheid South Africa, UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons or UsefulNotes/EastGermany, though the latter also kept using steam engines almost until the very end.
** On the other hand, steam still has its uses at sea, where water is in abundance. Those big supertankers shifting vast volumes of liquefied natural gas? They use steam engines fueled by burning some of their cargo to get around.
* Interestingly, many modern trains, especially passenger trains, are propelled, indirectly, by steam power. Electric trains, after all, are propelled by electricity, almost all of which is generated by boiling water to drive steam turbines. So many of the most modern locomotives are powered by steam, it's just that the steam engine is located inside a power plant many miles away.
** And most if not all nuclear power plants are steam-driven reactors.
* Steam ''turbines'' are what remain common in electrical power generation (most forms of power plants work on the base premise of "use X to heat water, to make steam, to push turbine, that generates electricity". The rest use an energy source to push the turbine directly) and on large ships. Large steam turbines can be very efficient but they work best running at one fixed speed. That's perfect for an electrical generator, and a ship can use gears or fancier turbines to allow a choice of a few propeller speeds (or use a generator, electricity, and a motor). But direct propulsion of locomotive wheels requires varying speed, and so steam turbine locomotives were rarely successful.
* Several steam locomotives have [[LongRunner served for an exceptionally long time before retirement]], which has helped keep them preserved and operating into the 21st century.
** The [[UsefulNotes/{{Hungary}} Hungarian State Railways]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAV_Class_424 424 class]] served from 1924 until all steam engines were retired in 1984. Their [[BoringButPractical sheer simplicity]] kept them around long after other steamers had become too expensive to keep around.
** The [[UsefulNotes/{{Australia}} New South Wales]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_Z19_class_locomotive Z19 class]] served from 1877, when New South Wales was a pre-Federation colony, to the end of steam in 1972, five years short of a century of service.
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_844 Union Pacific No. 844]] was never officially retired after it entered service in 1944, a unique achievement for a locomotive on a Class I railroad. It even outlasted the diesels meant to replace it [[https://nevadasouthern.com/equipment/locomotive-844-type-gp-30/ (including one that took it's number for a time)]]! [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU9uEwSGp9M On one occasion,]] the 844 was headed back to its home terminal when a diesel-powered freight ahead of it suffered a breakdown. In much the same manner as the Tornado above, 844 was able to save the stranded freight train without tying up the mainline for hours waiting for a rescue loco.
** Likewise, their [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_3985 "Challenger" 4-6-6-4 #3985]], restored to operation in 1981 and currently in storage pending another restoration. In 1990, by request of the American President Lines shipping company, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhgHrDbN4EU 3985 hauled a 143-car container train]] (almost 9,000 feet long and over 7600 tons) under its own power from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to North Platte, Nebraska.
*** UP has also (as of May 2019) finished the process of restoring "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 #4014 to operation just in time for the 150th anniversary of completion of the first North American trans-continental railroad line.
** Central Railroad of New Jersey [=(CNJ)=] 4-6-0 [='Camelbacks'=] served from 1901 until 1954, a pretty solid fifty years.
** Perhaps the ultimate examples, Cass Scenic Railroad Shay #5, delivered in 1901. It's been climbing Cass Mountain for more than a century, first hauling logs and now tourists. The Mount Washington Cog Railway has some steam locomotives that have been in service even longer.
** German class 52, known as the ''war locomotive''. While ''[[UsefulNotes/DeutscheBahn Deutsche Bundesbahn]]'' in West Germany retired them ten years after the Second World War, these simple and durable engines seen good use well into the 1980s in East Germany's ''[[ArtifactTitle Deutsche Reichsbahn]]'' and Polish ''PKP'' (as class ''[=Ty2=]''). The latter operated them even in early 2000s. And Russian Railways still keep some of them (class TE - ''captured locomotive'') in case of war.
*** As late as 2014 they could be found working on a short line serving a coal mine in Bosnia. They used to run the trains the full distance on the mainline, but now leave the ([[FiveFingerDiscount lighter]] ) wagons in a yard for collection by the state railway. Other mines in the area used USATC 0-6-0T engines from the allied side of the war, some locally built.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Steel_and_Wire Northwestern Steel and Wire]], a steel mill in Sterling, Illinois, had a history of using secondhand steam locomotives to move scrap metal and new steel ingots around the plant property--they were sent to the mill to be melted down, and management figured they still had some life left. The last one was retired in ''1980'', about twenty years after the last main line steam was retired in the US, and is now on static display behind the house of the company's founder, now a museum.
* North Queensland cane field tramways were still using steam until the late 1970s, due to reliability issues with the earlier diesels introduced in 1972, which had the crews back on steam for half the year. They had truly lived their life by then, in one case up until at least 1980. Some of these locomotives were built as battlefield locomotives during the First World War.
* {{Invoked}} in [[TheThemeParkVersion amusement parks]], which typically have a train that takes visitors on a tour of either the park, a small section of it, or a small section of scenery. The train is almost invariably pulled by an electric, diesel or gasoline engine designed to ''look'' like a steam engine (often complete with a coal bin full of painted wooden coal).
** Ride/TweetsieRailroad in Boone, North Carolina, not only uses two authentic steam engines (one from TheEdwardianEra and the other from TheForties), but they also use actual coal fuel. It helps that the park is located in Central Appalachia, a region of the United States known for coal mining.
** Except in the case of Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, where both theme parks run actual preserved locomotives on their in-park tracks, though they have been converted and no longer run on coal, now running on oil (Bunker C at Knott's, and recycled cooking oil at Disneyland). In fact, the Disneyland Railroad was one of the first attractions designed for the park.
** Busch Gardens in Williamsburg Virginia also uses real steam locomotives: they're modern narrow-gauge replicas of real European locomotives and run on oil instead of coal.
** The Gold Coast, Queensland theme park Dreamworld, until recently, had its monorail system supplemented by narrow-gauge steam locomotives form the Queensland cane fields, converted to gas firing and equipped with silly Wild West accessories in a similar manner to the Mantua Fat Boy model trains, such as huge pilots and funnel-shaped spark-arresting exhausts.
** The Rebel Railroad, since expanded into Dollywood, is an amusement park in Pigeon Forge, TN partially owned by Creator/DollyParton. It operates with 36" gauge steam locomotives originally built for the White Pass & Yukon Railway.
* Many countries still have some steam engines in working condition in reserve, for emergencies. In case of a natural disaster or war the electric grid might be off, oil might be in short supply, or diesels and electrics might be rendered useless by the EMP of a nuclear attack, but in an emergency you can still chop down a few trees and get water from a nearby river.
** Sweden dragged its last "strategic reserve" locomotive from its shed and sold it to a preservation society ''[[http://www.railwaymagazine.co.uk/sweden-disbands-final-strategic-steam-reserve-locos/ in 2016]]''.
* Developing countries have been known to doggedly keep steam going for decades beyond developed countries, such as some African countries during the 1970s oil crisis (or during economic boycotts, such as the aforementioned South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe), noting that their infrastructure needed significant upgrading to provide the technology base to support diesels. The combined cost sent them back to designing new steam power for some time. It helped that there is little oil in southern Africa but plenty of coal.
* Queensland Railways, which still owns most of the Ipswich Railway Workshops that are not held by the Queensland Museum, use the space to maintain a respectable fleet of heritage rollingstock, known as Heritage Fleet; this includes old style railmotors, steam locos including a Beyer-Garratt articulated locomotive, and plenty of heritage stock for them to pull, as well as some items for other preservation groups, including the Mary Valley railway's locomotives, Sunsteam's Savannahlander railmotor, and the Queensland Museums' [[UsefulNotes/PrussiansInPickelhauben A7V Sturmpanzerwagen]], Mephisto.
* China probably takes the cake for "shortest time between last steam and first high speed train". Steam trains last ran in regular revenue service along main lines in December 2005. The Shanghai Maglev opened in 2004 (making that time ''negative two years'') and in 2008 the first [[UsefulNotes/HighSpeedRail high speed line]] opened allowing steel wheel on steel rail trains to run at up to 350 km/h. Just three years after steam "died". And some steam locomotives are still in service as tourist attractions as well as a rapidly dwindling number of industrial / mining sites.
** Taken to extremes by high speed rail's TropeMaker, Japan. The first Shinkansen ran in 1964, and the last steam locomotive dropped its fire in 1976, for a time gap of negative twelve years.
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_of_Rheidol_Railway Vale of Rheidol Railway]] in Wales is the only place on British Rail where steam survived past 1968, as it wasn't considered economical to custom-build diesel locomotives just for that little narrow gauge line. It opened in 1902 and has been running ever since, currently with three steamers built in 1923 and 1924. It does have one diesel, but [[OlderIsBetter it's not as powerful as the steamers]].
* Although operated primarily for tourists, the [[https://www.steamrailway.co.uk/steamnews/2017/5/16/wolsztyn-re-launches-polish-scheduled-steam Wolsztyn line]] in Poland is the only railway in the world with scheduled steam services. For a price, tourists can even learn to drive the train themselves.
* The [[https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Steam Wikivoyage article]] on the topic [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin appropriately titled "steam"]] gives a few more examples.
* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiningen_Steam_Locomotive_Works Dampflokwerk Meiningen]]'' in Germany is fully capable of constructing brand new steam locomotives from scratch and is one of the only facilities that can make a new locomotive boiler to modern standards, including the one for ''Tornado'' mentioned above. It was kept in service maintaining steamers for East Germany and is now owned by Deutsche Bahn and contracts work to maintain museum locomotives and the occasional new build.
** Germany also has the "Harzer Schmalspurbahnen" (HSB), a narrow gauge railroad running mostly steam locomotives as part of regular public transport.
* A variation of the steam locomotive, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireless_locomotive fireless]], is still in use. Essentially replacing the boiler with a pressure vessel that is filled with steam from an outside source, these engines were used in mines, chemical refineries, ammunition factories, and other areas where smoke and/or sparks were not permitted. Some are still in use at industrial plants with a supply of steam, such as power stations, sugar mills, and breweries, and are being promoted as an eco-friendly substitute for diesel-powered shunters, which spend most of their time sitting around between jobs, idling their engines.
* The Nevada Northern Railway when it petitioned the federal government to allow it to discontinue its rail passenger service in favor of a bus line, was required to keep ''one'' passenger steam engine and its matching cars in storage as a back up for the bus service. This engine, Nevada Northern 40 was kept for many decades on property in the back of the railroad's shop and fired up on occasion for special events. When the railroad closed, the property was transferred to a new museum organization which then restored 40; and repatriated two other steam locomotives 93 and 81 back to the property for restoration as well. Now the railroad is known world wide for its extensive restored steam-era engine shops, and the three steam locomotives that have ran the line in preservation; with 40 itself being recognized as the [[https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-official-item/nevada/railroads-vehicles/engine-no-40 Nevada State Locomotive.]]
** A local legend passed around on the Nevada Northern was that to keep 40 safe for many years, the railroad staff would hook it up behind a diesel train at night and hide it in the local copper mines before corporate inspectors arrived on property so that they could lie to them claiming they had scrapped the old steam engine. Then once the corporate inspectors left 40 would be retrieved from its hiding place in the mine and brought back to its place in the back shops ins storage. This legend lead to the locomotive getting the nickname "The Ghost Train of Old Ely." Although most historians believe this legend to be false, it still makes for a great tall tale surrounding the locomotive.
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* The hard-core belief of Professor [[MeaningfulName Steamhead]] on ''ComicBook/NinjaHighSchool''. To show how hardcore he is, his rival on the MadScientist field is a man who supports ''solar energy''. However, it's not so much Professor Steamhead acknowledges no other energy sources as that he ''does'' use and consider them - as degenerate (in the mathematical rather than moral sense) forms of steam power. Likewise he considers all fields of scientific study other than [[OmnidisciplinaryScientist "Steamology"]] to be necessary prerequisites to the serious understanding of steam.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/OurMissBrooks'': At the start of the film, when Miss Brooks arrives in [[EverytownAmerica Madison]], she's seen disembarking from a passenger train drawn by a steam locomotive. Very much [[TruthInTelevision truth in film]], as the fifties were the twilight of the steam age in North America.
* The Red Triangle Circus Gang ride a steam train through Gotham City in ''Film/BatmanReturns'', in keeping with the "mix-and-match" time frame of the ''Batman'' films and Creator/TimBurton's films in general.

* Creator/HarryHarrison:
** In ''Planet Story'', an admiral who just happens to be a railfan specifically orders a spaceport built on the opposite side of the continent from the mine just to have an excuse to play with trains. His personal toy is a gold plated full scale replica of a Union Pacific Big Boy, the largest steam engine ever built. It's actually nuclear powered (Harrison describes it as powerful enough "to pull a battleship sideways across a mudflat") but it does produce enough steam to blow the whistle.
** In the alternate timeline of ''A Trans Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!'', Great Britain is the only country to have discovered atomic power. Naturally, they use it solely to power one steam locomotive.
* Many locomotives in the Creator/RichardScarry books and animated productions are of the steam variety: diesels are also used in conjunction with the steam engines, in such books as ''The Best Word Book Ever'' and ''What Do People Do All Day?'' In most cases, they are all fashioned off European locomotives.

* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]], [[JustifiedTrope justified]] and visually [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in Creator/AlastairReynolds' novel ''Chasm City'' (part of the ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries''). Chasm City on the planet Yellowstone is connected with its outlying spaceport via a train powered by a steam locomotive, but the train's appearance and furnishings are decidedly aerodynamic, hi-tech and modern. The bullet-shaped steam locomotives only came into service because a [[spoiler:nanotech plague]] devastated the city years ago, rendering a lot of sensitive electronics and electric-based equipment aboard the original types too risky to use. The steam itself is not produced by burning fuel, but is mined from the titular chasm of the planet, which vents it in large quantities, along with organic gases.

* The giant model trains running around the planets in "Toy Time Galaxy" (and the tiny model train hidden among one of those planets) in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'' are clearly pulled by steam locomotives.
* ''VideoGame/SimCity'':
** The trains in ''Sim City 3000'' are pulled by steam locomotives, regardless of how technologically advanced the rest of the city is.
** ''Sim City 4'' had three different trains: a freight and passenger train which were pulled by modern diesel locomotives and another freight train pulled by a locomotive that resembles "The General".

* Averted in the business simulation game ''VideoGame/TransportTycoon'' and its various successors/upgrades, which do feature steam trains in their appropriate time periods, with diesels being introduced as time goes on and steam engines eventually being phased out and no longer able to be purchased or renewed.
** Of course the player is able to maintain a steam railway well into the modern era if he or she wishes, but it will become less and less profitable to do so as the engines age and decrease in reliability to the point of hemorrhaging money.
** Some newGRFs in ''[=OpenTTD=]'' also allow steam trains to be built indefinitely.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'' is probably the first thing that pops into many people's minds when the words "Steam Train" are mentioned.
** The books were first written when steam power was the norm, and the steam locomotive characters remain because they're the stars of the series. Although the Fat Controller made an announcement that Sodor would be enforcing this trope when steam ended on British Railways, elsewhere, steam did indeed fall out of favor. Much AscendedFridgeHorror ensued.
** The TV series started as an adaptation of the books, and hence kept the same characters. Currently, it's permanently around 1960, when steam was still in use.
** In fact, Diesel's main goal is to try to get the Fat Controller to replace his steam engines with diesels.
** The original author of ''The Railway Series,'' Reverend Awdry, makes a ''point'' of enforcing this trope because he was extremely opposed to the "Dieselification" era of the British railways during the 50's and 60's; Essentially, the British government and railway companies were so intent on bringing in the new "innovative" diesel engines that they began slating all of their steam locomotives, even ones that ''just rolled out of the factory'', for scrapping. Not only was this a massive waste of money, it also became a rather embarrassing issue when the diesels turned out to be...not as reliable as they were supposed to be. This is the reason why diesels in the series were usually depicted as the bad guys (with exceptions like Mavis and [=BoCo=]) and why many of them tended to suffer from mechanical breakdowns.

* The trope is present in ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987''. The most incongruous example was in the episode ''Armstrong'', where Gyro's newly invented robot saves Scrooge's gold train (pulled by a steam locomotive) from a rockslide. The episode later features such modern technology as automatic garage door openers, computers and satellites!

* The train in ''WesternAnimation/WordWorld'' is a large blue steam locomotive shaped like the word "TRAIN" that is for some reason fueled by letters, couldn't decide whether it should have a 2-2-2 or a 4-2-0 wheel arrangement, and no one is driving it!

* The title WesternAnimation/DinosaurTrain is a green steam locomotive shaped like a Triceratops head that's powered by coal, a [[StealthPun fossil fuel.]]
* Trains in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePony'' are typically steam trains. ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTales'' features 90s computers and steam trains side-by-side.
* The circus train that eventually crashes in ''WesternAnimation/TheRugratsMovie'' is pulled by a steam engine, despite obvious late 1990s technologies and references occurring throughout the film.
** Additionally, the train in the main ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' episode "Murmur on the Ornery Express" has a streamlined 1930s-style steam locomotive, though this may have been deliberate, as it was meant to be a scenic train ride to a historic "Old Country"-style town (which also adds to the murder-mystery feel of the episode.)
* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TheRaccoons'' where the main transportation system is a rail system using contemporary diesel locomotives, although Sneer Industries does have an unused service track with an old steam locomotive.
* Also averted in ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife''; the only time steam locomotives are seen are on old trains (like in movies, or Ed's campaign train in "Ed Good, Rocko Bad"), but all the other times, the railroad system uses modern diesel locomotives (such as in "Manic Mechanic" and "Driving Mrs. Wolfe.")
* ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' had a train that commuted steel mill workers to and from the city and was powered by an old Great Northern 4-8-4.
* Astrotrain, of ''Franchise/TransformersGeneration1,'' is a triple changer, with his altmodes being a Class D51 steam locomotive or a shuttle orbiter. The former was retired in 1975, a decade before the character debuted. Later comics have him [[ReimaginingTheArtifact switching to either a modern diesel-electric train or some kind of space train]], or [[GrandfatherClause continuing to maintain the steam engine altmode well into the aughts]]. Being a giant space robot powered by energon and capable of flight, Astrotrain presumably considers these differences to be semantics.

* ''Literature/{{Franklin}}'' seems to take place in a bizarre universe where certain old-fashioned things (such as Franklin and his friends going to an old-style one-room schoolhouse, older-style automobiles frequently in use, etc.) co-exist alongside certain modern things (such as 90s-style desktop computers, and Franklin and his friends going to said "li'l schoolhouse" on a modern school bus). One of said old-fashioned things is the trains using steam locomotives, fashioned off the types used from the 1920s to the 1940s.
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode "Strangers On a Train" has Sue Ellen and her mother ride the Crown City Star, a long-distance passenger train hauled by a streamlined 1930s-style steam locomotive (noticeably with [[JustTrainWrong no tender car]]). [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the Crown City Star was first built and run in 1935 and has barely had any changes made over the decades, to the point where the passenger cars look noticeably run-down on the inside, and the dining car, lounge car and many of the sleeper cars are currently being fixed up (though the conductor states that they have the snack car available.)

** Oddly enough in the United States of America, a new 4-4-0 or two tends to pop up every couple of decades even in the post steam era. The Disneyland Railroad can be argued to be the start of this, building two new engines in the 1950's for the park. In the 1970's the National Park Service bought two new 4-4-0 locomotives from O'Connor Engineering (a Hollywood camera company with ties to Disney) for use at the Golden Spike site in Utah. Then in the 2010's a new company called the Kloke Locomotive Works dusted off the O'Connor plans, and built ''two more'' locomotives from them which are now used on tourist railroads. The Nevada Northern Railroad has noted their first locomotive was a 4-4-0 that matches the O'Connor replica plans too, and while they haven't committed to it; the idea of building a replica of that engine has been bounced around as well.

** Taken to extremes by high speed rail's TropeCodifier, Japan. The first Shinkansen ran in 1964, and the last steam locomotive dropped its fire in 1976, for a time gap of negative twelve years.