If Bern Hill did 46 paintings for General Motors before the end of 1952, why did GM only print posters for 31 of them? Greg Palumbo suggests that “the posters were limited to customers who were either going to or had recently ordered locomotives.”
This image is from the Palumbo collection. Click image to download a 6.8-MB PDF of this poster.
This might explain why the Union Pacific painting didn’t make the cut. At least for freight, UP was a reluctant adaptor of Diesels, preferring its Big Boys and other steam and, in 1952, beginning its experiments with gas turbines built by Alco and General Electric. Continue reading