Some work has actually been done on that! But it's not what the money's backing. The late Ing. L.D. Porta of Argentina was working on this kind of thing, among others. But steam locomotives are Backward and no politician in a developing country is going to go for that, especially not when international businesses are already in the business of selling diesel and electric traction. The only likely development is electrical generating plants that run on biomass fuel, it seems.
The Blackburn Buccaneer, the absolute master of low-level flying. With no automation, no radar terrain following, nothing except an amazingly stable airframe and insane pilots. When they ventured to the Red Flag exercises in Nevada, the US aircraft and ground-based systems couldn't touch them; they had never had to handle planes being flown at 10-20 ft above ground level.