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Travel by Train: The American Railroad Poster, 1870-1950 | 
 enlarge | Authors: Michael E. Zega, John E. Gruber
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $23.10
You Save: $11.90 (34%)
New (4) Used (13) Collectible (1) from $12.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 405189
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 122
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.1
Dimensions (in): 11.1 x 11 x 0.8
ISBN: 0253341523
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.6740973
EAN: 9780253341525
ASIN: 0253341523
Publication Date: October 2002
Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
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Book Description
This lavishly illustrated history of the American railroad poster whisks us away to an era when the rails were king. These enticing advertisements to visit the cities and landmarks of the growing United States make for a truly sentimental journey--and a luscious feast for the eyes!
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| Customer Reviews:
Another wonderful book January 2, 2008
We came across posters that we had not seen elsewhere in this book. Great documentary for a bygone era and the prints are excellent.
Stuck-up trains. June 22, 2004
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
The American railroads sold their services using posters but had a problem deciding what should be shown. European train posters mostly favored showing the end destination rather than the American graphic idea of showing the train. The first few posters shown in this beautiful book are a mixture of route maps, flamboyant lettering and illustrations of trains, sometimes all on the same poster, too.
Santa Fe, to my mind, really kicked off the great railroad poster by using the talented Louis Treviso and Oscar Bryn. They both produced knockout, straightforward graphic solutions, with bold colors and strong typography, clearly influenced by the leading European poster artists, Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucian Bernhard and the Beggarstaff Brothers. Into the twenties Santa Fe used Sam Hyde Harris to continue the trend in strong graphics. Southern Pacific used Maurice Logan to design equally powerful posters, page sixty-two has a stunning Logan graphic of two trains selling the Great Salt Lake.
Other artists and designers who get a good showing are Hernando Villa, who developed the memorable Indian's head for Santa Fe, Leslie Ragan for the New York Central (he has the most illustrations in the book) Sascha Maurer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and many artists who have one or two works shown. The authors combine all these creative folk and the way their output was used by the rail and ad industries up to the Fifties.
I thought the book was very well produced, though the caption typography is rather fussy, using the rather old fashioned Fig.33 and then capital directions in brackets (FACING PAGE TOP LEFT) in every case there is enough space to put the caption below each poster. The back of the book has a bibliography and index.
This is probably the best (and only) title about American railroad posters, some good work is shown in 'All Aboard' by Lynn Johnson (ISBN 0811817474) which also covers general railroad graphics. European travel posters have had plenty of coverage and I can recommend a really super book of British work, 'Railway Posters 1923-1947' by Beverly Cole and Richard Durack (ISBN 1856690148) with over two hundred illustrations in a well designed book.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover,
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