A long time ago it wasn’t diesel, electricity, or gasoline that powered humanity’s vehicles, but steam. Very heavy, with minimal range and requiring regular impractical refuelling, steam-powered vehicles were nevertheless immensely powerful – far more so than those powered by other fuels – and thus they were the engines of choice for heavy duty applications, even as all other vehicle types moved on.

This is one such steam vehicle, Nikolaus Löwe‘s fabulous Fowler traction engine, here outfitted with a working crane. Connected to the tractor-part via a wonderfully complicated-looking arrangement of ratchets and gears, Nikolaus’ creation harks back to an era of coal, soot, noise, and perhaps a little magic.

Get steamy at Nikolaus’ photostream via the link above, whilst we ponder if today’s electric fuel of choice – being very heavy, with minimal range and requiring regular impractical refuelling, but nevertheless immensely powerful – really marks a century’s worth of progress from when this was trundling down the roads.