Between 1870 and 1950, America's railroads produced a body of poster work significant both for the artists involved and for the range of images created. The railroads used this visual medium from their founding, first in the form of broadsides, dominated by text and intended to convey practical information, and then, during the 1890s, as vivid lithographed display posters. For the next 50 years, American railroads commissioned posters designed to spur the popular imagination and thereby encourage travel. Images of compelling intensity included Maurice Logan's icons of the 1920s overland limiteds passing in the West; Adolph Treidler's wonder cities; Santa Fe's Native Americans; and Leslie Ragan's and Sascha Maurer's machine-age steamliners.
Although a great deal has been written about European railway and travel posters, their American counterparts remained in the shadows. Travel by Train focuses on the artists, railroad men, and advertising agencies that created and produced the work. It presents the posters in the context of the historical trends and competitive strategies that shaped the development of the railroad industry. The book also follows the development of the advertising business and graphic design in the U.S. and Europe. It features approximately 160 poster images (many in color), personal photographs, and sketches, many of them never before published.
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From the proliferation of competitive railroad lines across the continent in the second half of the 19th century to the decline in passengers after World War II, this book conveys the excitement involved in train travel by reproducing 120 poster images, photographs, and sketches from the time before most people were driving or flying to their destinations. The coauthors know their subject well: Gruber is president of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art, editor of its magazine, contributing editor of Classic Trains, and recent editor of Vintage Rails; Zega is a regular contributor to the two latter magazines, among others. Their extensive research proves fascinating, and the colorful posters still maintain their visual appeal. Five chronologically arranged chapters interweave information about the artists and how the characteristics of their commissioned designs serve the advertising purposes of the railroad lines they worked for. A large number of artists, both well known (N.C. Wyeth, John Held Jr.) and not so well known (Maurice Logan, Leslie Ragan), are included in the discussion, with reproductions of their designs. Recommended to both academic and public libraries for their transportation history, graphic design, or advertising history sections.
Anne Marie Lane, Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Anne Marie Lane, Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Michael E. Zega has researched and written about railroad advertising and promotion for the past decade and contributes to many magazines, including Vintage Rails, Classic Trains, and Journal of the Southwest. He lives in New York City.
John E. Gruber of Madison, Wisconsin, is president of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art and editor of its magazine, Railroad Heritage. He is contributing editor to Classic Trains, preservation columnist for Trains, and co-author of Caboose (2001).
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stuck-up trains.,
This review is from: Travel by Train: The American Railroad Poster, 1870-1950 (Hardcover)
The American railroads sold their services using posters but had a problem deciding what should be shown. European train posters mostly favored showing the end destination rather than the American graphic idea of showing the train. The first few posters shown in this beautiful book are a mixture of route maps, flamboyant lettering and illustrations of trains, sometimes all on the same poster, too.
Santa Fe, to my mind, really kicked off the great railroad poster by using the talented Louis Treviso and Oscar Bryn. They both produced knockout, straightforward graphic solutions, with bold colors and strong typography, clearly influenced by the leading European poster artists like Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucian Bernhard and the Beggarstaff Brothers. Into the twenties Santa Fe used Sam Hyde Harris to continue the trend in strong graphics. Southern Pacific used Maurice Logan to design equally powerful posters, page sixty-two has a stunning Logan graphic of two trains selling the Great Salt Lake. Other artists and designers who get a good showing are Hernando Villa, who developed the memorable Indian's head for Santa Fe, Leslie Ragan for the New York Central (he has the most illustrations in the book) Sascha Maurer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and many artists who have one or two works shown. The authors combine all these creative folk and the way their output was used by the rail and ad industries up to the Fifties. I thought the book was very well produced, though the caption typography is rather fussy, using the rather old fashioned Fig.33 and then capital directions in brackets (FACING PAGE TOP LEFT) in every case there is enough space to put the caption below each poster. The back of the book has a bibliography and index. This is probably the best (and only) title about American railroad posters, some good work is shown in All Aboard!: Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel, by Lynn Johnson which also covers general railroad graphics. European travel posters have had plenty of coverage and I can recommend a really super book of British work Railway Posters 1923-1947: From the Collection of the National Railway Museum, York, England, by Beverly Cole and Richard Durack with over two hundred illustrations in a well designed book. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover,
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another wonderful book,
By Fydly "bookworm" (Easton, CT, USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Travel by Train: The American Railroad Poster, 1870-1950 (Hardcover)
We came across posters that we had not seen elsewhere in this book. Great documentary for a bygone era and the prints are excellent.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful book,
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This review is from: Travel by Train: The American Railroad Poster, 1870-1950 (Hardcover)
Well written, well assembled, beautiful reproductions of the posters. I bought it for the Leslie Ragan images (there are more than a dozen!) but discovered much more. I appreciated that no picture takes up more than a page (it's always distracting when pictures get spread across two pages). In the writing, I would have preferred more about some of the actual trains and less about advertising history. But the writing is informative and clear.
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