Author Archives: Paul Rennie

Here is photograph of KX and St Pancras by my friend and colleague, Dave Hendley. It’s worth having a look at in detail… The combination of the railway machinery and the half-light of evening dusk provide for a lovely and … Continue reading →

This is a coloured screenprint by Alan Baines from 1974. It shows two big US railway diesels… Alan has cleverly combined the two images so that one speaks of scale and the other of speed. The cropping of the images … Continue reading →

Helen, from the letterpress workshop at CSM, has made a lovely coloured lino-cut of a Gresley A4 streamlined steam loco…. I love the telegraph pole by the railway line. That’s an absolutely accurate historical detail, that you see in the … Continue reading →

The BBC have repeated a documentary about the people who play with model railways…you can watch it on the UAL streaming site, Box of Broadcast, at www.bobnational.net Just log-in with your UAL username and password, and search for The Joy … Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking about ghost train fairground rides…maybe because of halloween. The ghost train was an elaboration of the affinity between steam locomotives and the spirit world. Indeed and to ordinary people, steam locomotion appeared to be based entirely on … Continue reading →

It’s October, so yesterday, I went to my local Model Railway Exhibition. This happens every year, and I’ve posted about it before. Yesterday, I visited with my friend and former colleague, Alan Baines. It turns out, he’s quite an expert… … Continue reading →

Here is a terrific poster by Paul Colin for the film, Ghost Train…

I’ve previously posted about the American artist, Thomas Hart Benton. Benton is part of what art historians call American Scene Painting. This was a cultural group that was part of FDRs New Deal of the 1930s. Artists became an important … Continue reading →

Here’s a terrific poster, from the 1920s, for the Mitropa long-haul services across Europe. Mitropa began as a specialist railway catering company in Germany during WW1. The war provided for an enormous expansion of railway services to support the German … Continue reading →

Here are two posters for West End Watches, from India. They make appeal to the punctuality of the railway by association…