Tiger Steam - Thailand

Mogul 709 is refuelled at Kanchanaburi in February 1974. Many Thai steam locomotives on lesser duties were wood burners. The oil crisis in the mid-1970s seemed likely to give them a new lease of life, but in practice the country was running out of cheap wood (and is now suffering annual floods as a result of deforestation) and the accountants soon worked out the real cost of transporting the fuel. Many of the freight trains in southern Thailand consisted only of vans of locomotive firewood. (BR)