Steam Locomotives in Popular Culture
Over the years, steam locomotives have become a very popular image in representations of trains. Many toy trains based on steam locomotives are made, thereby making the image iconic with trains to children. Their popularity has led to steam locomotives being portrayed in fictional works about trains, most notably The Railway Series by the Rev W. V. Awdry and The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. Steam locomotives have also been "stars" in many television shows about trains, such as Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, based on characters from the books by Awdry.
There is also the Hogwarts Express from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, which in the films is portrayed by the GWR 4900 Class 5972 Olton Hall steam engine in special Hogwarts livery. The Hogwarts Express is so popular in its own right that it is an attraction at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter section of the Universal Studios Islands of Adventure amusement park in Florida.
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Famous quotes containing the words steam, locomotives, popular and/or culture:
“Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
“The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prairie flowers lie low:—”
—Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)
“The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races.... The economics of this musical esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)