Bern Hill had another banner year in 1952, with 15 locomotive paintings on the cover of Railway Age. He also did the Christmas painting for the year. A Texas cowboy looks down on a Texas & Pacific passenger train passing … Continue reading
With seventeen paintings in one year, many were closely scheduled. Yesterday I noted that Hill had three in the month of August, while today’s first painting is from a Railway Age dated just one week after the last of yesterday’s … Continue reading
It is worth noting that, not only did Railway Age allow GM to extend its ads behind the magazine’s masthead, it apparently allowed Bern Hill to select the colors of that masthead. The colors not only made the lettering visible, … Continue reading
General Motors had 18 Railway Age cover ads in 1951, 17 of which appear to have been done by Hill. The eighteenth cover featured a photograph purporting to show the construction of the 10,000th Diesel locomotive manufactured by General Motors. … Continue reading
For the last four months of 1950, Hill’s Railway Age covers came at a pace of one per month, plus a special Christmas cover on December 23. A Chicago & North Western 400 train crosses the Mississippi River in this … Continue reading
Bernard Hill was born in Toronto in 1911. After studying art in Toronto and London, England, Hill worked for a variety of printing and advertising companies. In 1940, he moved to New York where he soon went to work for … Continue reading
In 1950, General Motors stunned the advertising world by issuing a series of Railway Age cover ads that portrayed trains as simply part of the landscape, not a dominant feature. The gritty railroad world of cinders, smoke, grease, and gravel … Continue reading
In 2013, I did a series of three posts (one, two, and three) on Bern Hill, an artist who made dozens of memorable paintings used by General Motors on the covers of Railway Age magazine. Perhaps the greatest living expert … Continue reading
Several years ago, I presented a painting of an SP&S E-7 locomotive prepared by General Motors design staff. I noted that the locomotive wasn’t actually delivered in those colors; instead, it was painted in the Great Northern Empire Builder colors. … Continue reading
On April 27, 1947, Illinois Central inaugurated its all-coach, daytime train, the City of New Orleans. The train left each terminus at 8:00 am and arrived at the other end a few minutes before midnight. Click image to download a … Continue reading
