Uwe Bergmann

Keith Chester writes affectionately about a late good friend.

I first met Uwe Bergmann over 30 years ago, about the time he took early retirement from the German post office to devote the rest of his life to travelling the world and curating his enormous collection of photographs of steam locomotives. He was a most congenial man, blessed with a caustic wit and an always interesting take on the world around him. Over the years we had many long conversations, usually by telephone, ranging from steam locomotives to the most recent crop of idiots and idiocies wherever they were to be found. I can easily imagine his commentaries on Trump and Musk …

Uwe’s name will be known to many as for decades it appeared under photographs from his collection in countless books and magazines published worldwide. Uwe had a phenomenal collection of photographs of steam locomotives from every country where they once ran. This grew to such proportions that it eventually consumed every nook and cranny of his flat in Hamburg, which was overbrimming with shelves, cabinets and boxes completely filled with photos. There was just space left for a small kitchen, his bed (under which were stored more boxes) and his desk.

Uwe was extraordinarily generous in sharing this bounty. A casual question such as “Do you by any chance have a photo of a Moscow–Kazan Railway K class 4-6-0?” almost invariably produced a week or two later a thick envelope with ten or so pictures of these handsome locos. Uwe was also very knowledgeable on steam locomotives and world railways, information he was always happy to pass on. He had hoped to write a book on fireless locomotives but health issues meant this was not to be.

Uwe’s great passion was, however, Indonesia: its culture and peoples, but above all the fascinating array of narrow gauge steam locos that worked on its sugar cane railways. These he first visited in 1978 and just kept going back. In 1980 he published his first book, Sweet Steam, a guide to these lines. (Second-hand copies can still be obtained at horrendous prices.) From this evolved the idea of a book on the steam locomotives of the industrial railways of Indonesia. For 30 years Uwe patiently gathered information and photos, and worked on his text. After many setbacks, this was eventually published in 2017 as Die Dampflokomotiven der indonesischen Werkbahnen. This 512-page book, everything a railway book should be and the definitive work on its subject, is Uwe’s monument.

Over the years I was able to illustrate many articles and books with photographs credited “Uwe Bergmann collection” and I shall be eternally grateful to him for his willing assistance. But it is for his generosity of spirit and friendship that I shall remember him.