Product Description

Many travellers can still remember the days when their journeys were enhanced by the framed pictures, advertisements and maps which kept them company in their railway compartments. This is the first book on the railway carriage print and is written by the leading authority on the subject, Greg Norden. Describing how railway companies first portrayed themselves through scenic photographs and advertisements, he carries the story through to the height of the genre in the mid-20th century, when the railway publicity departments moved into colour reproduction. They commissioned some of the leading watercolour artists of the day, including Rowland Hilder, Jack Merriott, Leonard Squirrell, Frank Mason, James McIntosh Patrick and Claude Buckle, to paint scenes from all around Britain, to be displayed as prints in the carriages. From the mid-1930s to the late-1960s, trains virtually became travelling art galleries, and it is this period which forms the centrepiece of the book. Using many of the prints from his personal collection - the largest in the country - Greg Norden takes us on a nostalgic tour of Britain in the mid-20th century, before modern town planning and the motor car had exerted their baneful influence on the landscape. Dividing the subject geographically, he covers six regions featuring a variety of scenes - from fascinating views of towns and cities to pleasant villages in rural areas; from the rugged mountains of Scotland and Wales to the numerous ports and resorts around the coast of Britain. He dwells on such pleasures as a railway outing to the seaside and devotes a chapter to the artists and the artwork and another to the collecting of carriage prints today. With its well-researched, often humorous narrative, 200 illustrations with full captions, biographies of the artists and comprehensive print listings, this definitive and attractively priced book will appeal to railway enthusiasts and historians, art and antique collectors, lovers of watercolour and commercial art and anyone interested in images of a lost landscape during the age of steam. More than just a book - a kaleidoscope of impressions as vivid as views from train windows - glimpsed at speed and never forgotten.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #496032 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Railway Magazine, 1997
The next best thing to a journey in the carriages themselves!

Scotsman Newspaper 1997
A delightfully nostalgic book... it should enthral almost anyone with an eye for a gift that is rather different and rather special

Heritage Today Magazine 1997
This delightful and beautifully produced book is a poignant memoir of the steam age