I’ve found more Bern Hill passenger train posters in moderately large size. These include a couple that I’ve previously shown as covers of Railway Age. This Great Northern painting presciently views the locomotives from the perspective of someone sitting in … Continue reading
In addition to glamour trains such as the Super Chief, California Zephyr, and Empire Builder, Bern Hill’s paintings for General Motors included a number of freight trains. In 1951, when his paintings began to appear, only a few were of … Continue reading
The Seattle World’s Fair gave passenger service on the Great Northern, and presumably the Northern Pacific, a reprieve not granted to many other railroads. It didn’t hurt that the Milwaukee Road–afraid that its money-losing Olympian Hiawatha would actually make money … Continue reading
If yesterday’s criticism of Leslie Ragan seemed harsh, it was because of my familiarity with posters by Bern Hill, an underrated artist who did 65 paintings for General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division. These paintings were all used as front-cover advertisements in … Continue reading
Hernando Gonzallo Villa was another in the stable of artists nurtured by the Santa Fe Railway in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in 1881 in Los Angeles to parents who had moved there when California was still … Continue reading
In 1948, the Union Pacific began a new series of magazine ads that emphasized the trains rather than the destinations. Each ad consisted of a beautifully rendered yellow streamliner and another graphic symbolizing the theme of the ad (“economy,” “charm,” … Continue reading
In 1946, Union Pacific ran a series of ads featuring Willmarth water colors of vacation destinations such as Colorado, Yellowstone, and Zion. Other ads in the series include California, dude ranches, and Western Wonderlands, but the cartoonish drawings in these … Continue reading
As World War II was winding down, Union Pacific sponsored a radio show called Your America that was broadcast over 123 stations nationwide. The show featured true stories of Americans at work and at war. Click any image to view … Continue reading
The success of the Silver Meteor and Champion inspired several railroads to join with the Altantic Coast Line and Florida East Coast in providing coach streamliner service between Chicago and Miami in December, 1940. Such service was complicated by the … Continue reading
Although Seaboard Airline was the first to offer a New York-Florida streamliner, Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) was the larger and healthier of the two competitors–Seaboard had gone bankrupt in 1907 and again in 1930. ACL was initially skeptical about streamliners, … Continue reading
