This is a good point.
I used to live near one of or maybe the only rail yard that rebuilds and restores steam engines in the US.
Years back a relative who was a professional historian had permission to go on the yard and even sometimes move the engines around the yard or go on test rides with the people restoring them. Got to ride on the actual Orient Express like that once. I remember once they had just finished a medium sized steam freight locomotive. They'd taken it out and pulled some heavy loads testing it. I seemed to recall it pulled the same weight that would require everything 8 modern diesel electrics could pull up the test hill. The test was only 60% of its expected capacity. So I can imagine people saying the dinky little diesel electrics weren't a match for really hauling something. But with those you can add and subtract engines as needed, they keep synchronized and can work together and in the end simply are better fit for the purpose.
There is a book I'd recommend by Albert Churella:
https://www.amazon.com/Steam-Diesel...eywords=albert+churella&qid=1577811573&sr=8-2
This isn't a railfan book or a book of pretty pictures but an excellent business and management case study of the transition from steam to diesel by the US railroads. Although it is focused on a technological discontinuity in the railroad segment the underlying issues are common to most technology discontinuities.
Well into the 1940's engineers at companies like Alco and Baldwin were still publishing papers pointing to the great advances in steam locomotive technology and how these would keep steam competitive with diesel and electric traction. Now we look back at the idea of roller bearings transforming performance and some of the other great advances and with hindsight will probably either laugh or ask how anyone could have thought that but these were not idiots, they were highly experienced and extremely competent engineers that had raised the steam locomotive to its ultimate peak of development. These companies had a very slick manufacture and design capability which was perfectly attuned to the needs of steam era railroads. Their problem was in looking at an industry through the prism of an existing technology and being blind to the power of a new one to completely transform an industry. Many of their arguments were quite correct, even as the steam locomotive died the giant articulated designs had immense pulling power unrivalled by alternatives, and diesel locomotives were expensive to buy (interestingly it was an early example of finance packages and after sales service being more important than purchase cost and drive away product state as GMD/EMD leveraged their economic muscle to offer knock out financing to customers and after sales support, staff training etc) but they didn't comprehend that railroads would adapt to multiple locomotive lash ups to get higher power and adapt to the technology as the advantages in terms of lower maintenance, lower through life costs, efficiency, staff costs and the torque characteristics of electric motors were so overwhelming. And even at that time people were noticing just how dirty steam locomotives were and the effects on local air quality.
I think it was you that commented earlier in this thread that technologies reach their peak of perfection as they are made obsolete, and it is true. The last steam locomotives were magnificent machines, but hopeless anachronisms even when new. The last generation of piston engine fighters like the F8F Bearcat and Hawker Sea Fury were also magnificent but already yesterdays technology even as they were entering service. My last job in electricity generation before I returned to marine was a project for a new coal fired power plant (which happily was cancelled before being built) and despite utilising every technology available with super critical boilers and steam conditions requiring much of the piping, boilers etc to be made from high nickel super alloy steels (if I remember rightly, circa, 725C steam and almost 350Bar pressure) and it was still only calculated to be 45% efficient (I think Australia continued pursuing the same technology to try and prove coal had a future, but it is all spookily similar to the efforts to prove that steam locomotives were still the future for railroads in the 1930's and 1940's).
I believe we are seeing a similar transition in automotive, yes the old ICE still has certain advantages but fundamentally the tide is with electrification of automotive and beyond the emotional appeal of engine exhaust notes it's hard to argue against that tide really.
