Reuters

The discovery of steam power just 200 years ago powered the Industrial Revolution but like all one-time technological breakthroughs, the world long ago shunted most steam trains onto the sidelines of history.

Yet despite cleaner, more efficient and cheaper forms of transport having taken over, in a small corner of rural Australia the sights, sounds and smells of the Industrial Revolution are still alive.

Puffing Billy is Australia’s last full time railway employing steam engines at its main source of power. Set in the picturesque Dandenong Ranges on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne, this narrow gauge experiment was born from dour economic times in the 1890s.

For Puffing Billy driver Steve Holmes, whose life has been immersed in its soot and steel since he was painting carriages as a nine-year-old boy, steam, as much as blood, runs through his veins.

“I grew up at the end of the steam era, I’ve been around the engines all my life,” said Holmes, who became a driver in 2005.

These days, Puffing Biily still attracts thousands of visitors a year. But whether they are drawn to the old world charm, the beautiful scenery along the line or a trip down memory lane, what most will not see is the enormous physical effort required by staff and volunteers to keep the trains running.

Nature intervened in a large landslide that covered the tracks and closed down operations in 1953. During a decade of decay and disrepair, public pressure to reopen the railway as a tourist endeavour began to build. In 1962 the railway was reborn, using mostly volunteer labour to bring the age of steam to new generations.

Over 250,000 people a year now visit the railway. Holmes and his extended “railway family” of hundreds of volunteers and paid staff stubbornly refuse to let Victoria’s narrow gauge heritage die.

“After all, the greybeards that want to see her running are not getting any younger,” he said.