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 ballast was replaced by gorgeous scenes of rivers, mountains, and man-made towers traversed by sleek trains led by bright, colorful streamlined locomotives.
The first Railway Age cover signed by Bern Hill is this magnificent view of the California Zephyr. Click image to download a 1.7-MB PDF of this magazine cover. Click here for a 9.3-MB higher-resolution version of this PDF.
The first cover signed by Bern Hill is completely unrealistic. Nowhere is there a mountain like that looming over the Western Pacific’s main line. Where the Western Pacific does cross the mountains, nowhere is there a red barn high on a ridge top above the Feather River Canyon.
Even the locomotives, ostensibly the subject of the ad, are unrealistic. They appear to be a typical A-B-A lash-up of GM bulldog-nosed engines. But a close look reveals that the cab units are much longer than the middle unit, meaning the end locomotives must be E units (with six-wheel trucks) while the middle one is an F (with four-wheel trucks). Western Pacific didn’t own any E units, and the few railroads that tried to run Es and Fs together found they didn’t work well with one another.
Trains magazine reprinted the California Zephyr image in April 1975. Curiously, it only allowed the image to protrude a little into the magazine’s masthead. Click image to download a 2.1-MB PDF of this magazine cover.
None of that mattered, however, compared to the incredible image that would make anyone want to take that train and make railroad executives realize that their railroad, too, could become the backdrop for similar scenes. This image is so striking that it has been reproduced many times, including on the cover of Trains magazine, as posters, and in many other publications.
Just one week before the California Zephyr cover, GM placed this ad showing a Southern Railway train traversing meandering rivers. Click image to download a 2.3-MB PDF of this magazine cover. Click here for a 20.7-MB higher-resolution version of this PDF. All three images today are from Greg Palumbo’s collection.
Much less attention has been paid to the Railway Age cover that appeared the week before the Western Pacific one. This cover shows a green with yellow pinstriped Southern Railway train crossing green forests and yellow rivers (presumably reflecting a sunset, not industrial pollution). The locomotives are realistic enough, though the whole thing looks more like a toy train running across someone’s carpet than a real train. But the main problem with this image is that it is unsigned or, more likely, the signature was cropped out or is obscured by the GM text box.
The two images have two things in common. First, the locomotives are a mere part of the landscape, not the dominant feature. Even the colors of the Southern Railway locomotives reflect the landscape. Second is the little note, apparently affixed to the image with a thumbtack, with the EMD logo and a brief description of the locomotives. Similar notes would be applied to all of the Bern Hill magazine covers through the end of 1953 — and to no other General Motors covers. I think it is safe to say that this painting is also by Bern Hill.
Over the course of 1950, General Motors would place 17 ads on the covers of Railway Age. Two use the Ben Dedek image shown yesterday while two others use the same image of a GP-7 that appears to be signed “Blaine.” Of the other 13, signatures or other evidence make it clear that 12 are by Bern Hill. The February 11 Southern Railway cover would make 13. I’ll present some of the other 1950 covers tomorrow.