ARTIST: J Craig Thorpe (Washington, born 1948)
TITLE: Train - Ohio Locomotive
YEAR: 1995
MEDIUM: oil on heavy paper
CONDITION: Damage to lower left corner of paper. No visible inpaint under UV light.
ART SIZE: 14 x 12 inches / 35 x 30 cm
PAPER SIZE: 18 x 15 inches / 45 x 38 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right
NOTE: This painting originally appeared on the Fleetwood Legendary Locomotives of the 50 States Ohio Commemorative Cover postmarked June 12, 1995. During the predawn hours of June 12, 1905, engineer Jerry McCarthy received a call imploring him to make up time on the Pennsylvania Special's much-publicized inaugural run. McCarthy was assigned to engine No. 7002 and given the formidable task of shaving time off the next leg of the westbound trip. Because the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railway (a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad) was locked in a speed war with its rival, the New York Central, a timely run was imperative. Both companies were vying to trim their Chicago-to-New York schedules to 18 hours. While McCarthy was pulling out all the stops with No. 7002, switch-tower operators compared timings and estimated his train's speed along a three-mile stretch between AY Tower and Elida, Ohio. Although they concluded that the engineer had achieved a world-record speed of 127.1 miles per hour, it is now believed that this finding was speculative at best. Nonetheless, McCarthy was traveling at a tremendous clip and did indeed make up a sizable amount of time on the lagging Pennsylvania Special's maiden run. In this painting, No. 7002 is steaming across flat lands in western Ohio. This storied E2-class 4-4-2 engine was built in the Pennsylvania Railroad's Juniata Works in 1902. To avoid confusion with its similarly-named Pennsylvania Limited, the Pennsy in November 1912 renamed the Special to become its flagship Broadway Limited -- a name it has held ever since.
PROVENANCE: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation.
CATEGORY: old antique vintage painting for auction sale online
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BIOGRAPHY:
J. Craig Thorpe (born 1948) is a modern American commercial and landscape artist. Much of his work depicts trains and the rail transport industry in the Western United States and Alaska. He has advocated greater use of rail transport, especially in contrast with automobiles, and has served as a director of the rail advocacy group All Aboard Washington. Thorpe was commissioned to paint an image celebrating the 2006 centennial of King Street Station in Seattle, Washington.