Counting the Southern Railway cover from February 11, 1950 and the 1952 Christmas cover, Bern Hill did 46 paintings that appeared on Railway Age magazine covers in 1950, 1951, and 1952. Near the end of this period, General Motors printed up a series of 18″x24″ posters featuring most of Hill’s paintings. Since the last cover painting used on a poster was from the December 15, 1952 issue, I assume the posters were printed in 1953.
All of the images in this post are from Greg Palumbo’s collection. Click image to download a 6.9-MB PDF of this poster.
The posters excluded the thumbtacked blurb that appeared on all of the magazine covers. In its place was the logo of the featured railroad in the lower left corner and a small black band across the bottom with a one- or two-line statement about the picture usually printed in the Coronet typeface (although the first two posters shown here are exceptions), beneath which was usually written, “Powered by General Motors Diesel Locomotives.”
The Chicago & North Western poster is the only one that obscured part of the painting with a blurb. Click image to download a 3.0-MB PDF of this poster.
The one exception was a Chicago & North Western poster that was overlayed by a rectangular white blurb saying that the C&NW offered “smooth going” while across the bottom was the statement, “General Motors Diesel locomotives contribute to Smooth Going on the North Western.” This poster may have been printed separate from the others, possibly by C&NW itself.
Click image to download a 4.9-MB PDF of this poster.
Including the North Western poster, I’ve found images of 31 different posters. I’ve previously posted 15, including five posters here, five here, and five here. Over the next few days I’m going to post the remaining posters in PDF format.
Click image to download a 6.1-MB PDF of this poster.
In making these PDFs, I had to make some creative decisions on coloring. Palumbo’s high-resolution images of posters appear to have been made with a camera and the colors don’t always match what I’ve seen of other images of the same posters. I’ve used the magazine covers and various images to attempt to replicate what I think were the original colors of the posters.
Click image to download a 5.5-MB PDF of this poster.
For example, Palumbo’s image of the Soo Line poster below was mostly grey, but the Railway Age cover and some other images I’ve seen show a hint of blue. I’ve added that blue to the PDF.
Click image to download a 5.7-MB PDF of this poster.
The first poster shown above was particularly difficult. The Railway Age cover shows a blue sky at the top of the image, but none of the poster images I’ve seen have a blue sky. While I can adjust colors I can’t make colors where they don’t exist so I left it white. I’ll make a note of any other color issues over the next few days.