Penn Central No. 4715 at the Illinois Railway Museum

Penn Central No. 4715, 10 x 14 inch watercolor by George C. Clark   PRINT AVAILABLE

When I started going out to the Illinois Railway Museum with my watercolors and sketchbook on a pretty regular basis back about 15 years ago, this was one of the earliest paintings I did in what has turned out to be my Age of Iron series.  I was especially attracted to this big green cab-centered electric locomotive because its shape reminded me of the big old black Lionel electric locomotive that originally belonged to my father that he let me play with when I was a kid.  Somewhere there is a photo of the train set up under a Christmas tree dated 1921 on the back.  My father would have been 11 that year.  That Lionel got pretty banged up in my care-- my father scored much higher as a loving parent than he did as a conservator of collectables.

In those days No. 4715 was kept outdoors, and I painted it on a sunny summer day.  I had to squeeze back in-between two locomotives parked on a parallel track to get this view.  Even so, I got a little more fish-eye lens type distortion on No. 4715's cab than I was happy with.  I corrected that with Photoshop to produce the image above.  This corrected version is only available as a print.

Since I painted this more train sheds have been built at IRM and this locomotive is displayed indoors now, where visitors can see it from walkways between the rails.  Although as a rail fan I am happy it is now being protected from the weather, as an artist I find the new display a little too dark and claustrophobic to paint, even with its illumination from skylights and electric lights.