All Aboard!: Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel

by Lynn Johnson, Michael O'Leary

Travel back to the wonder years of rail in this beautiful compendium of art and illustration. Through luggage labels, maps, posters, advertisements, promotional brochures, napkins, and other colorful ephemera, All Aboard! celebrates our romance with the railroad. Its pages provide a nostalgic look at rail travel as it used to be, from the exciting early days at the turn of the century through its heyday in the '30s and through World War II. Lynn Johnson and Michael O'Leary have collected hundreds of period images, from Deco-era logos that evoke the sleek, streamlined style of the day to wartime propaganda posters highlighting the muscularity of freight locomotives that transported weapons and tanks for American troops. All Aboard! also explores the art of the Orient Express and great European lines, the rugged rails of Canada, and exotic points abroad. This exciting new resource for train enthusiasts and everyone on the lookout for terrific images recreates the splendor of the modern locomotive era.

Genres: Trains

132 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

Reviews

[Ray LaManna · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book showing railroad advertising pictures, timetables, etc. for the railroad industry over the last century.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a graphic designer back in the 1980s and 1990s I used to love Chronicle Books of San Francisco. They had the best design source material around for vintage. Anything from old cookbooks to antique toys to 20th century railway graphics, of which this book is chock-full of. These sourcebooks were all beautifully designed and made to last, of stiff yet creamy plasticized paper made to withstand many page turnings and years of use. Also to look good on your bookshelf or coffee table. I owned a bunch of them.

But gradually the internet became the tool of choice for art research and creation and though there wasn’t a need for artists to keep libraries of reference material anymore I kept much of mine. Just for the aesthetic delight of it.

This book however I found used. It’s about the Golden Age of train travel. That is, the late Victorian Age through the 1950s, the peak years when ordinary citizens used it to get around, and the railway companies who ran the trains advertised heavily for them to do so. Most of it consists of advertising materials, but the text is interesting as well, for example going into the graphic styles of each decade. In what is known as the Art Deco design period, in the 1930s, streamlined train engines became the norm, the sleek designs luring riders with promises of speed and comfort. But in actuality, the new engines were the same design of the steam trains used previously, just with fancy new sheathing and improved mechanics. And to be fair, that streamlined sheath did improve the train’s speed.

Another advertising gimmick railway companies used was to name specific trains and the routes they traveled. Santa Fe had the Chief and Super Chief engines; Union Pacific, the City of Los Angeles route. Even today in the U.S., with the passenger lines long conglomerated into Amtrak, the route names persist: The Empire Builder, The Sunset Limited, The City of New Orleans, all of them calling back to a slower, perhaps more romantic time.

Also included are travel posters from the U.S., England, and Europe; baggage tags and stickers; and menus and other ephemera, as well as historic photos of the trains themselves. So potent was the magic of the rails, and the strength of its images, that in the U.S. at least, older people born before the 1950s mourn it still. I remember talk from my older relatives about how the railway magic was gone and the stations in decay shortly before the formation of Amtrak, when cars and the interstates had become the primary means of travel.

All Aboard! is out of print now, but worth a look or a purchase if you love trains.