“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.”
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
Dispatched next day with Royal Mail 2nd Class
- 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
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.
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
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.