Logomotive: Railroad Graphics and the American Dream

Ian Logan & Jonathan Glancey

Hardcover | 26.4 x 18.7 cm | 272 pp | 400 illustrations

Sheldrake Press | 2020 | 9781873329504

Logomotive is a visual tribute to the heyday of railroad graphics. Arriving in America in 1968, the London designer Ian Logan was blown away by the logos and slogans he saw on the sides of freight cars rumbling down Main Street. Between designing fabrics for Mary Quant and Jeff Banks, he went back time after time with his camera, travelling across America, wandering into freight yards to record the Route of the Eagles, the Rebel Route, the Speedway to America’s Playground and many other mesmerising advertising ideas of the day.

To this gallery of vintage Americana, the distinguished design commentator and author Jonathan Glancey brings a warm and perceptive analysis of its iconography. He shows how every aspect, from locomotives and rolling stock to advertisements and timetables, was designed to project an image of speed, efficiency and the American pioneer spirit.

In these pages you will find locomotive name plates, posters, postcards, pencil sketches and engineering drawings, stencils, lettering manuals, leaflets, badges, newspaper and magazine cuttings, brochures, timetables, coasters, enamel plaques, illuminated drumheads, tickets and passes, mascots, menu cards, dining-car place mats and designs in wood, brick, tile and concrete.

In the Foreword, the award-winning architect Norman Foster conveys his own love of trains. New to the USA as a student in the early Sixties, he was thrilled by the energy and panache of this dynamic country, its hit railroad songs and the marriage of machinery, branding, graphics, colours and lifestyle epitomised by its vast railway system.