Odcházející železnice – Zavadil Lubomír (2022)

This Czech-language photo book focuses on ČKD-powered vehicles, first- and second-generation Škoda locomotives, motor coaches and electric multiple units. It traces their development, service and especially their final years through photographs taken between 2018 and 2022, travelling from western Bohemia to eastern Slovakia—from the Cheb engine shed through numerous Czech and Slovak towns to the transshipment yards at Čierna nad Tisou. Alongside views of trains on the line, it includes photographs from locomotive depots and images of drivers at work. The book also contains texts on subjects including the Vršovice “Bertas,” the railway cemetery in Česká Třebová, the motorisation and electrification of Czechoslovak State Railways, Mr Kavčiak’s recollections of the final years of the “Cénul” locomotives at the Zvolen depot, and Mr Borisza’s memories of carrying out testing in 1983 with the “zero-series” ŠRT “Čmelák” locomotives at Čierna nad Tisou, delivered there that year from Prague’s ČKD, among other topics. More than 400 previously unpublished photographs, both digital and analogue, are accompanied by commentary. The analogue images are composed to evoke photographs taken decades ago, although they were captured in the present. The book records a departing face of the railway, a stage that, like steam, is slowly but surely passing into railway history.