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The Red Devil and Other Tales of the Age of Steam by David Wardale has become something a "classic" since its first publication in 1998. It is currently in its third edition and available from the outlets listed at the bottom of this page. Published by the author, its 500 pages document Wardale's career in steam from early 1974, when as a young engineer he first set foot in South Africa, until the time of his departure from Datong Locomotive Works in China, disillusioned, in early 1989.
The book is both a technical and a personal diary. It abounds with detailed technical records of every aspect of Wardale's work, most particularly relating to the developmental work that he undertook in South Africa where almost single-handedly (and sometimes in defiance of the railway authorities) he produced two major rebuilds from the existing locomotive fleet, starting with some modest improvements to 19D 4-8-2 No. 2644 which turned the worst performing locomotive in the depot to the star performer, and concluding with his masterpiece, Class 26 4-8-4 No. 3450 "The Red Devil".
For anyone interested in gaining or expanding a technical understanding of the steam locomotive (both its limitations and potentialities), this book is amongst the most comprehensive that has ever been written on the subject. Those with a less technical bent may feel daunted by the wealth of tables, graphs and diagrams, however even if they skip over the details, they will still find the book full of delightful anecdotes as well as interesting operating statistics and cost/performance comparisons between different forms of traction. Wardale may have devoted his career to the development of steam traction and in the pursuit of its continued operation, but he is not blind to the advantages that diesel and electric traction offer. He does however clearly demonstrate that steam was prematurely axed and that it had (and might still have) an ongoing role to play in situations where its strengths prevailed - for instance on some of South Africa's freight lines in proximity to that country's vast coal mining areas.
The Red Devil was no more than a cost-limited rebuild of a 1950s "old steam" design, carried out with limited resources. Yet the improvement in its performance might in another context have been described as "electrifying". The book tabulates and graphically represents every aspect of the improvements that were achieved, however one doesn't need to understand all the figures to appreciate the raw facts:
On test:
In normal service:
In addition the Red Devil demonstrated speed capability to the extent that 100mph performance could almost certainly have been achieved had the railway authorities allowed it, which of course they didn't. The Red Devil had by then become an embarrassment to their policy for "modernization" and the fast-track abandonment of steam.
David Wardale is not just a gifted engineer, but a gifted writer and story-teller as well. His book may be heavy reading for many, but the effort is more than fully rewarded by the opportunity he provides to learn some of the engineering realities of steam technology, and by sharing the excitements and disappointments of his pursuit of perfection in steam.
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