I didn’t see a spot to show off any artwork, wall-hangings, clocks, signs, pictures or posters you may have displayed in your train room…
So here goes… I’ll go first… here’s what I just recieved (the BNSF locomotive pic was taken by a photographer in Kansas and put on an 11x18 piece of metal) I’m unsure what process is used to get the photo image on the metal.
I bought it at an art show (right next to a train show I attended last month in Venice, Florida)
Looking back in my archives, I had it as the leader with the 313 behind on train #60, The Montrealer, on January 15, 1994. Ran it from New Haven to New London on the Amtrak Shore Line, then up the old Central Vermont to Palmer, Mass. (had the 407+277 on the return).
With two F-40’s, you’d set it up to have the HEP running from the second unit, so the lead engine wasn’t in the 8th notch all the time…
Hey, thanks OldEngineman, Nothing like hearing about some true hands-on experiences, will forward to my son who’ll surely appreciate the history. Regards, Peter
My brother is a photographer and has put several of his photographs on metal. I have a picture of my father with his motorcycle that my brother took then had it put on metal. It’s a cool look. You can also have photos put on canvas. That makes a simple photo look classy. Just Google MPIX, they’re located in Pittsburgh, Kansas. Here’s a link: https://www.mpix.com/
If it weren’t for my apartment peculiarly disallowing the use of Command Strips I’d have this hung right above the layout. My bedroom has a nice painting of a Texas Special E7 being cleaned. I’ll send that later.
My wife found this in a box while cleaning out a closet at the American Legion. They were going to toss it. The company is still in business in Grand Rapids, Michigan .
Turn left 90° and over the bed where I dream about trains, I have these beautiful postcard watercolor paintings showing scenes of Venice that I discovered in the attic. I have little insight as to who in my family could have taken this tour of Europe in the early 1920s but there were cards from France, Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland in those old albums. Most were black and white images.
Returning full circle to the living room is the actual layout space. Over it I have hung four of my dad’s paintings and a clock made by George Walbeck.
If I had the resources, I’d like to hang some of my own artwork.
I have a crud ton of store-bought train posters hung up, but these customized ones are my favorite. (The frames are dirt cheap and broken, so I need to get proper ones - which is why they aren’t hung up.) These are from an a old UP calendar (maybe 1970s or so?) that I was given that I repurposed. These four were the ones out of the twelve I liked best, and all are Western themed - crossing the Great Plains / buffalo hunt, Last Spike 1869, building the first Mississippi River bridge, and one with a train and side-wheel steamboat. The other eight were too modern for my tastes - almost all were post-steam, if I remember right.
I forgot to add some of the details of this watercolor.
I knew Ted Rose’s address and phone number from his ads for paintings which appeared in some of the trains magazines and, since we were planning a trip out to New Mexico, I made it a point to note his address and phone number. When we arrived in Santa Fe I gave him a call and he invited me to drop by his studio. I did and we had a pleasant visit. When I asked about paintings for sale he pulled out the small group he had recently finished. One of these was State Line Tower - the first tower at the border of Ohio and Indiana. I admired the painting and said I’d like to think about it. About 2 weeks after we returned home I decided to purchase it.
I never get tired of looking at the painting and every time I do, even on the hottest days, it makes me feel cold. I can smell the coal smoke and the hot oil and steam and feel the blast of wind driven snow as NKP 757 slams past my position on the tower platform and I know in a few seconds I’ll have an encore of that experience when the approaching engine booms past.
Both of these, plus seven other Ted Rose watercolors appear in my new book, “Steel Rails, Small Town: The Railroad History of Kent, Ohio” published last year.
The third print on the wall is of Cleveland’s Terminal Tower is by Louis C. Rosenberg. For the opening of the CUT in 1930, the Van Sweringen brothers commissioned Rosenberg to make a series of prints detailing the construction of the CUT; a complete set of prints then was given to each railroad president at the banquet marking the opening of the CUT in 1930.
In the 1980’s, I answered an ad in Trains magazine where a fellow made PRR-style station signs for any station one wished.
And to think that during ‘Hard Times’ folks made clothes out of such articles, not to mention kids collecting errant chunks of coal along the R/R tracks to burn in the stove.
Here are the highlights.
