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In this colour photo, 15 postcards are arranged in a circular fan on a green background. Another postcard illustrating the cover of Logomotive sits in the centre.
On the red front cover of Logomotive is a black-and-white railroad graphic of Zephyrus, winged god of the west wind, pointing to a streamlined future above a speeding, three-car diesel train. The title follows in bold, yellow, Art Deco lettering.
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan in 1972, an engineer wearing a blue cap smiles down from the cab of his Union Pacific EMD SD4 Locomotive 446, painted Armour Yellow with a grey roof and a slogan in red letters proclaiming Dependable Transportation.
On this engineman’s pass issued by the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, the nickname Nickel Plate Road adopted by the company is printed in bold black type on a patterned pink background with the date 1926 and the number of the pass in red,
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan in 1972, the side of a brown Santa Fe boxcar carries the legend Shock Control in bold white capitals and the slogan A smoother ride in a light-yellow script face.
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan in the 1970s, a freight train rumbles across asparagus fields in Salinas Valley, California, with ploughed furrows lending perspective to the foreground and blue-grey mountains, hazy clouds and a deep blue sky forming the backdrop.
In this colour photograph taken in 1972 by the railfan designer Ian Logan, a conductor with a dark blue cap rides the caboose at the end of a Chicago-New Orleans train of the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad.
In this 1970s colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan as he travelled across Nebraska in the cab of the California Zephyr. a train approaching from the west is headed by the EMD SD40-2 locomotive 3256, headlight blazing in the fading light, patches of snow lying next to the tracks, telegraph poles marching into the distance.
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan in St Louis in 1972, a rusting enamel sign screwed to the side of a brown-painted wooden boxcar carries the name Western Pacific in stylized white capitals on a black background. At the centre of the panel a red feather pierces a white roundel marked with Feather River Route in black seraph capitals
In this colour photograph taken in the Burlington Yards in 1972 by the railfan designer Ian Logan, the General Motors GP38 locomotive 717 carries the initials GM&O in white capitals on a brown background, standing for Gulf Mobile & Ohio, a railroad identified by its distinctive winged logo here painted brown on cream beneath the engineman’s window.
In the Burlington Yards, Kansas City, in 1972, the engineer of this St Louis-San Francisco SD45 locomotive detached his train and rolled forward so the railfan designer Ian Logan could take this colour photograph of the locomotive with the number 926 and the nickname Frisco picked out in orangey brown on a thick white band.
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan, Los Angeles Union Station stands proud with its clock tower at the end of a patterned broad walk and open space planted with tall thin palm trees.
In a colour photograph from 1960, the F3A locomotive 883A painted Gulf Mobile & Ohio brown leads the commuter train between Chicago and Joliet that was widely known as The Plug.
In this studio photograph shot in colour, American railroad timetables from the 1930s to the 1960s record the bold logos of the Western Pacific, Rock Island, Missouri Pacific, Wabash, New York Central, Lackawanna Railroad, Chesapeake & Ohio Lines, Great Northern Railway and Texas & Pacific Railway.
In this colour photograph taken in St Louis in 1972 by the railfan designer Ian Logan, the interior of an observation car built by Pullman for the Kansas City Southern Railway’s Southern Belle is warmed by subdued lighting, furnished with chromed-steel and leather armchairs, hung with curtains and Venetian blinds and embellished with engraved glass panels.
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan, the number 942 is painted in red with a fine black border in a bold sans serif type on the rich Armour Yellow bodywork of a Union Pacific locomotive.
In this colour photograph taken by the railfan designer Ian Logan in the 1980s, the Santa Fe GP30 locomotive 8742 belches its way through Holbrook, Arizona, at the head of a freight train, the company’s circle-and-cross logo elongated to adorn the nose and its livery instantly identifiable by the characteristic combination of dark blue and yellow.
In this black-and-white image of the back of the card, the words Post Card appear in an open-face font. A vertical dividing line of small type identifies the publisher. The right half of the card has a space for the stamp and five lines for the address. The left half carries a small caption at the bottom identifying the source of the image on the front.
“This is a glorious and thoroughly enjoyable miscellany. One for the American railroad fan and those with an eye for the imagery of railways worldwide.”
Roger Backhouse, National Railway Museum Review

Vintage Railroad Postcards (Pack of 16)

By Ian Logan

£15.95

Travel back in time to mid-century America with these 16 railroad-themed postcards, designed with rare photographs and ephemera from the collection of Ian Logan, the railfan designer and co-author of Logomotive.

13 in stock

Free delivery on orders over £20
Dispatched next day with Royal Mail 2nd Class
Details
  • RRP: £15.95 (incl. VAT)
  • Format: 106 mm x 142 mm landscape
  • Paper: 320 gsm Omnia Natural
  • Weight: 100 g
  • ISBN: 978 1 8733 2969 6
  • Publication: October 2022
  • Delivery
  • UK: 75p
  • International: £1.55
Description

Ian Logan’s passion for vintage railroad graphics was rooted in a Fifties and Sixties childhood attuned to the sounds of folk, skiffle and blues. Hearing Lonnie Donegan’s hit ‘Rock Island Line’ on the radio in 1961 inspired Ian to pack up and go to America to see the names, the places and the trains for himself.

He has selected the images on these postcards from his collection of Kodachrome slides and printed ephemera, built up over a lifetime of journeys across America. With this bumper pack of 16 postcards, you can tag along with him on a multi-decade Pan-American railroad journey through time.

Contents

Cover Art by Neil Gower, 2020

Sans Serif Type on Union Pacific Locomotive, 2016

American Railroad Timetables, 1930s-1960s

Santa Fe GP30 Locomotive 8742 passing Holbrook Station, Arizona, 1980s

Kansas City Southern Observation Car, Southern Belle, St Louis, 1972

Gulf Mobile & Ohio F3A Locomotive 883A, the Plug, Illinois, 1960

Union Pacific EMD SD40-2 Locomotive 3256, Nebraska, 1972

Gulf Mobile & Ohio GP38 Locomotive 717, Burlington Yards, 1972

St. Louis–San Francisco SD45 Locomotive 926, Burlington Yards, Kansas City, 1972

Western Pacific Feather Logo on Boxcar, St Louis, 1972

Los Angeles Union Station, California, 1980s

Union Pacific EMD SD4 Locomotive 446, Vernon Yards, Los Angeles, 1972

Nickel Plate Road Engineman’s Pass, 1926

Santa Fe Boxcar, Burlington Yards, Kansas City, 1972

Salinas Valley, California, Christmas Day 1972

Illinois Central Gulf Caboose, Burlington Yards, Kansas City, 1972

Author

In this colour photo, a smiling Ian Logan sports a Biro in the pocket of his blue open-neck shirt.

Ian Logan was at the centre of the design revolution that marked the end of post-war austerity. He studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London (now Central St. Martin’s), and won a scholarship to the Konstfack, Stockholm’s University of Arts, Crafts and Design. In the early 1960s he joined JRM Design, a fabric print company set up by a group of Central graduates in an almost derelict building in London’s East End. Ian and his partners produced prints for up-and-coming fashion designers such as Mary Quant and Jeff Banks, and designed a tin tray with a Middle Eastern-inspired motif that became enormously successful, first in Carnaby Street and then all over the UK.

Mad on Americana

In the mid-1970s he set off in a new direction. Inspired by decorative Victorian tin boxes, he produced a range of tins for Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Whittard of Chelsea and the National Trust. Commissions came from France, the Netherlands and the United States, for which he developed the Americana range featuring diners, gasoline stations and collectable cars. His obsession with Americana has inspired a book, too. Logomotive is a tribute to the design and marketing of the American railroads of the mid-century, full to bursting with pictures and ephemera from Ian’s collection.