Trains

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Yes, I've had a thing about trains for a long time. Not just steam locomotives either, although of course there are my first love. However, growing up in the 70s after the age of Main line steam, diesels such as the Westerns and Deltics were very much my trainspotting gateway drug. One of the things I used to do when I was a kid was to sketch steam locomotives from photos in my railway magazines, and some of these weren't that bad. So when I was looking for a subject to sketch in charcoal, one of my first thoughts was a 9F locomotive. I still think that this is one of the best charcoal pictures I've ever done, and it's a fact that it was the first picture that I ever sold.

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Here's an object lesson. This second locomotive, a Southern Railway, Maunsel Lord Nelson class locomotive is nowhere near as successful as the first. This is partly because it's nowhere near as dramatic an image, and partly because it's not as well executed as the 9F. But it's also because whereas I drew the first picture on a page from a good quality paper sketchbook, this one is drawn on papere from a very cheap and cheerful book, which gives it a smudgy, grainy quality which for me really doesn't work on this subject. The wheels are quite nicely done, but when you get down to it, it just isn't as good as the first.

The next one sees me getting a more dramatic image again, and it approaches the quality of the first without quite getting there. The cab isn't quite right, now is the tender, and overall it isn't quite as shadowy and moody as the top picture. This is also a Southern Railway locomotive, but it's a Bulleid Merchant Navy Pacific. The front end is quite good, but there's probably too much light and not enough shade for it to make the best use of the particular quality of charcoal. This was on good paper again, and you can see it has just that bit more sharpness than the previous picture.

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This last one is probably the most successful charcoal picture since the 9F. This is a tank engine rather than a locomotive. Basically, a tank engine doesn't need a tender, since it carries its own coal and water. It's range would be less than a locomotive, and it would be used for local freight passenger services, and shunting. Being a darker engine this one makes better use of the qualities of a good charcoal picture.

I did think that this one of the last three was the most likely to sell, but it took a little while

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Well, this was the last charcoal sketch of an engine today, because by the time I had completed it I was seriously contemplating giving painting a try. And so I decided that for my very first painting I would have a go at a steam locomotive. And what better locomotive to paint than a William Stanier LMS Duchess class locomotive. I'll be honest, this first painting took hours. It took several sessions, and I had never used acrylic paints or canvas before. I'll be honest, I look at the scans now (the original has been sold) and I'd like to think I could do better,But then that's the point, you live and learn, and hopefully your technique develops over time.

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It was just after this first painting that I decide to experiment with watercolours - which I had never used since school. AS a kid I paid a couple of trips to the Woodhams Scrap Yard in Barry Island, South Wales, where the gently rusting hulks of a huge number of old locomotives were a mecca for spotters like myself. So I decided that I;d try to paint ta locomotive in the scrapyard, and this is what I came up with. It's a real curate's egg, looking at it now. I still think that the front buffers, and cylinders are very good indeed. It's just a shame about pretty much everything else. I think I've got the grey and the rust mixed fairly nicely, but oh, that shadow on the boiler is horrible. Still, it sold.

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It was quite a while before I returned to painting engines. I painted another railway subject in the shape of an old signal box, which you can see in my gallery. I really like this painting as well, and think it's rather nicely executed, but I haven't found a buyer for it yet. Then I started painting on smaller canvases - 5 x 7 in - for a change. I'd discovered the delights of painting trams by this time, but I decided to come back to the railways, but this time to paint a classic diesel locomotive - a class 55 'Deltic'. This is in almost every way a better painting than either of the previous engine paintings. It's more accurate. The colours are applied with a lot more skill, and the smoke above the engine is so much better than the steam on the first painting. The foliage is miles better than anything else I;d achieved on that score up to this point. I was incredibly pleased with myself for being able to paint something like this. And did it sell? Not a sniff of interest for a long time. Still, at least it eventually sold together with the Western diesel, which is a later painting..

British Railways 9F locomotive awaiting restoration

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By way of a change, and bearing in mind my watercolour Barry Island painting, I decided to paint a steam engine in the process of restoration. Remembering my successful first charcoal picture I settled on a 9F, and went for a 12x10 in canvas. In all honesty, I do think you can see when you compare this to the Duchess class painting that my technique had definitely improved. I think that the colours, although muted deliberately, are pretty effective, and I think it's a nicely composed piece. But, maybe because of the subject matter it steadfastly refused to sell for ages, but eventually went to the same buyer who bought the signal box.

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Still, nothing daunted I returned to using my small canvases for engines. This rather lovely little Great Western locomotive attracted universally positive comments when I posted it on my website, and to be fair although I say it as shouldn't I do think it's a rather lovely little piece. I let loose a little more with the colour, with good effect. I like the station buildings in the background, and the trees as well. It's altogether a better piece of work than the Duchess. Yet it is only a small canvas board - 5x7in, and it seemed for a while that people just don't want small pictures like this. The thing though is not to give up. If the subject is appropriate and the painting is done as well as you can, then there will be someone out there who wants to buy it, and this one did sell after a couple of months.

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Despite the lukewarm reception my small canvases tend to get I do like painting them, though. So I pressed on, and executed this one of one of my favourite diesels. This is a class 52 diesel hydraulic 'Western' locomotive, just coming out of Paddington. It's kind of a companion piece to the Deltic , and like the Deltic it's in an earlier British railways livery rather than the rather staid intercity blue and yellow in which it would finish its career. I like the way I've used the vivid colours on this one. I'm also pretty happy with the platform details, and the gravelly track bed, which is a huge improvement from earlier train pictures.

There wasn't much interest in this painting until I combined it with the 'Deltic' painting and sold the two together.

replica of Trevithick's Locomotive

I started trying to do sketches regularly in my sketchbook, and to combine this with the painting. This is one of my earlier sketches, made on a morning I spent in Swansea's wonderful Waterfront Museum. This is a replica of Richard Trevithick's original steam locomotive, the first in the world. Although Richard Trevithick himself was a Cornishman, the locomotive itself was used in South Wales first, at Merthyr Tydfil, in the Penydarren Iron Works. Poor old Trevithick himself never made much money from his invention, but he opened the door.

This is a sketch made on site, in a good quality sketchbook with a very ordinary HB pencil, and I just made the sketch because I thought it would be an interesting subject to try to sketch, not to try to sell it.

King George V - Charcoal

I'd say the same about this one, the Great Western Railway's and C.B. Collet's masterpiece, the King George V. It just struck me one day that it was getting on for a year since I made my last charcoal sketch, and so I abandoned my ink pen for one day, and this is what I came up with. I think, being immodest, that it's my most successful charcoal sketch since the 9F locomotive right at the top of this page.

Is it for sale? Well, the thing is that it's in my sketchbook, and I didn't make it with a view to eventually selling it. On the other hand . . . I'm always open to offers.



Alright, so there's no actual train in this as such. However, it is on the platform of Paddington Station, so to that extent it qualifies. Originally I wanted to paint a scene with evacuees boarding a train, but I became far

The Evacuees

more interested in the evacuees and their stories than with the train itself - hence this painting. It's a busy and complicated scene, but then that's what I feel sure that it would have been like at the time. I felt moved by the two children in the centre in their school uniforms, the younger, seemingly wearing a uniform a couple of sizes too big looking very worried, the older keeping a stiff upper lip, staring into the future with determination.

I don't often put a wash onto the canvas before I start an acrylic canvas, but in this case I put a very light pink wash onto the canvas before I started sketching out the figures and background. I think that this helped with the flesh tones of the figures, but it didn't necessarily make the background any easier.

Looking at it critically, although I'm pleased with it, I do think that if I tried another painting like this, I wouldn't have such a large figure in shadow on the far right. It's not brilliantly done, and I think it slightly unbalances the composition. Also the clock on the top right is not brilliantly executed.

About the time that I was finishing "The Evacuees" my daughter Zara - aka my biggest fan as an
artist (it's true, she is my top cheerleader) - asked me to paint her the exterior of a nice Art Nouveau Paris Metro station. We settled on Abbesses. My output of acrylic paintings has slowed considerably in the 12 months or so from June 2017 - I'll come to that, and the majority of canvases I've produced in this time have been 20x16 boards. Still, Zara said she wanted a smaller one - so this is actually 16x12. It hangs in her bedroom to this day. I like this one in as much as while I don't think that any of it is brilliant (although I do think that the Metropolitain lettering is very good) I don't think that any part of it is badly done either, which does mean that at least it works as a whole.

Just because I wasn't painting acrylics, though, doesn't mean that I wasn't producing anything. Towards the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018, after I'd finished full home made Christmas Card production mode, I made several sketches of engines and locomotives using my trusty ink pens. You can see a selection of these below:-

I find sketching like this very relaxing, and the fact is that after using the first and the third to make YouTube videos demonstrating how I did them, I also sold the first three. I haven't tried to sell the fourth one because it's in one of the sketchbooks I'm rather proud of, and I don't want to start pulling it apart yet. 

I've been very conscious of how much more successful - in my eyes - my sketches are in portraying what I want to portray in the way that I want to portray it, than my paintings are. However, I would like to think that I am slowly getting better at painting. This is painted on another 16 x 20 canvas board, and it took literally hours of work. I painted the three gents on the left first, and was pretty pleased with them. However this put pressure on me to produce a train which was as good (in my eyes) as the figures. I may be deluding myself, but I do think that if you compare the engine in this painting to the one in the first engine I ever painted in acrylic, you might be good enough to say that I've made some progress and got better. Mind you, in three years one would hope that would be the case, but it doesn't necessarily follow. 

In September 2018 I made a series of ink sketches of the 7 tramways of Great Britain. Then it occurred to me that if I also sketched the 2 Light railways, and 3 Underground Railways of Great Britain, then I would have twelve sketches which would be enough for a calendar. So here's the first, the Tyne and Wear Metro. Personally I always thought of this as an Underground Railway, but officially it is classed as a light railway. Well, call it whatever you like, I think it's great. I first used it in 1982, when it was a mere couple of years old, and yet another thing for the good people of the North East to be justifiably proud of.

As for the other light railway, well that's younger but only by a handful of years. As the name suggests, it's the London Docklands Light Railway, or DLR. Now, the DLR is now actually a part of the whole London Underground network, so is it fair to count it separately. In a word yes. It's my game and we play it by my rules. I moved from London in 1986, and the DLR opened 11 months later. It is a cause of shame to me that I left it over 20 years before I would use it for the first time. Still, I have to say that much as I prefer well looked after old stations to well looked after new ones, the DLR is great.

Here's a question. London has the world's oldest subway/metro/underground system, and Budapest the second oldest. Which city has the third? Would you believe it's Glasgow? You should. It's true. Nicknamed the Clockwork Orange, the Glasgow Subway is a great little system. In bygone days I was a contender in the Grand Final of BBC's Mastermind quiz, and my final took place in Glasgow. On the morning of the final, I took the Subway out to the Kelvingrove. That's enough to keep me happy for one day on it's own. In fact it was a wonderful day all round - I won and it was also my birthday.

Now, when I read things about Merseyrail it classes it as a commuter network as opposed to a subway or underground railway. Well, you can call it what you like. It has three different lines and underground sections with some underground platforms and stations. That's good enough for me. Liverpool is one of the greatest cities in the UK that I've never visited, which is something I really need to rectify, especially considering I'm a lifelong Beatles fan. Then I could pop along to Manchester to ride on the Manchester Metrolink trams, and finish off in Blackpool.

Now, it doesn't take a great deal to start me waxing lyrical about London's Underground Railway - the Tube. I can't help it. I grew up close to the western arms of the Piccadilly, District and Central lines, and I have a hopelessly romantic view of the Tube, based on childhood memories of train rides into the centre of town to visit interesting places. I was a student in London University too - although it was quicker to take British Rail into Charing Cross than take the tube from New Cross or New Cross Gate. Since my mother moved away from London I've not had call to visit London very often, but on the occasions that I do, I always leave the car near Boston Manor station, and take the Tube wherever I need to go until it's time to come back
home.

I did make watercolours of a number of London Underground Stations:-

Greenford Tube SOLD

Northfields Tube 
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Sudbury Hill Tube -
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The three above, of which I can't say I'm terribly proud, were actually a commission. I painted the middle one, Northfields station for the 2021 30x30 challenge, and I almost immediately sold it to a client who wanted the other 2 as well. Since then I've done:-

Park Royal tube 
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Chiswick Park Tube

Acton Town Tube

Kilburn Park Tube

Earl's Court Platform

Hammersmith Tube (Hammersmith and City Line)
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Covent Garden Ink and watercolour

Southgate Tube ink and watercolour

I don't think that the tube station pictures above are the best I've ever done, but I've persevered. These are from 2021-2

Perivale Tube
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Hounslow West Tube

Rayners Lane Tube

Southgate Tube

Hounslow West Tube

I have to be honest, the Underground has been a subject I've really enjoyed working on. For the 2023 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge I made this :-

London Underground Southgate Station platform
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Euston Station (Northern Line?) c. 1930

Euston Station - City and South London Railway (Northern Line now) c. 1910

Piccadilly Circus - Bakerloo Line - c. 40s/50s ?
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The first is an old school train of the kind I used to use on the Central Line from Ealing Broadway. However it must have been a special service since this is the modern day Southgate station. The second is based on an old Black and White photo taken about 90 years ago.  The third is also Euston, but this one was based on a photograph from about 1910. The fourth is the Bakerloo Line at Piccadilly Circus, sometime in the first decade and a half after the end of WWII.

I made a couple of ink sketches of the old Metropolitan Railway, which eventually became the Metropolitan Line. 

Now, maybe it's because Britain was the cradle of the railways, but even despite the swathe cut through Britain's railways by Dr. Beeching in the 60s, there are still very fine and interesting little railways to be found within the UK. Let's take pier railways, for an example.

When I was researching Britain's Metros, existing tramways and light railways for my series of sketches of which the five sketches above are a part, I came across several pier railways. Which is a bit embarrassing, since the one of them which is probably best known of all of them is the Southend Pier Railway, which I was actually taken for a ride aboard on for a school trip in 1972 when I was 8. This first sketch shows the railway as it was then, and as it

continued until the mid to late 1970s. This is an electric train, running on a third rail system, similar to the London Underground, although I believe that it was all narrow gauge. If you don't know, Southend Pier is actually the world's longest pleasure pier, stretching out into the sea for about a mile and a quarter. For a long time the railway itself just didn't run, but then it was opened again in 1986, with two diesel trains, one of which is shown in the second sketch.

While I was making this sketch, it also occurred to me that I have actually also ridden upon one of Britain's other pier railways. Back in 1983 I took a trip to the Isle of Wight along with my Uncle, Aunt and two young first cousins. The ferry

docked at Ryde Pier, and we rode he pier train along to the island. The trains are former London Underground stock, serving out a genteel seaside retirement. Now, you already know how much I love the Tube, so to me this is the best of all possible worlds. Piers? Love 'em. Trains? Love'em. London Underground - well, you can see where I'm coming from with this, I'm quite sure.

Neither of these pier railways, estimable as they are, happen to be the world's oldest continuously operating pier railway, though. No, that distinction belongs to the Pier railway that I haven't been on yet, the Hythe Pier Railway. This links the Hampshire village of Hythe to the ferry to Southampton. It's run by two venerable and rather quaint looking electric locomotives which are both about a hundred years old, powered through a third rail. This one I finally got to ride in August 2023.

The Hythe Pier Railway isn't the world's oldest continuously operating electric railway of any kind, though. No, to find that one you have to head east along the coast to the city of Brighton.

Brighton is a city of many delights, one of which is the Volks Railway. This joyous little operation runs along the seafront, and has been doing so since before the end of the 19th century. And yes, I have ridden on it - back in about 1976 give or take a year or two. For those interested in the technical details, it's a narrow gauge railway using an inside offset third rail system. So there.

As an extension of the same series, I rather idly started sketching the continental European Metro systems that I've used on my travels. The first Metro system outside of the UK that I ever used maybe isn't what you'd have expected. But the first country other than the UK that I ever visited was Greece. You have understand that I grew up reading and loving stories from Greek mythology.

I'd made up my mind that if I ever got to go anywhere, then it would be to Greece, to Athens to visit the Acropolis, and then to Crete to visit Knossos, the real life Minoan Palace on which the legend of the labyrinth of Daedalus holding the Minotaur, was based. I saved up pennies from my Saturday and evening job in a local supermarket, and in 1982, when I was 18, I went. Now, I didn't actually found out about the Athens Metro until I had come back to Piraeus for the last time on that trip, but I found it was by far the best way of getting from the port into the city. For most of the route into the centre of the city it was just like a normal suburban service, but just before Monastiraki, the closest stop to the Acropolis, it went underground, which made me feel much more at home, as it happened.

So a year later I used my second. Look, we can argue whether the Circumvesuviana is really a Metro or not. The rolling stock to me was definitely Metro stock, but look, if you want to call it something else, then that's fine, you go ahead. I'm still including it on my list. Separate from the Italian national railway system, the Circumvesuviana runs out from the centre of Naples to surrounding areas, and is by far the best way of getting from the centre of Naples to the Pompeii excavations. If I recall correctly, Pompeii Scavi is the name of the station you want.

So to . . . well, yes, to Paris. After some misadventures in Italy,I took a sleeper train from Milan to Paris, and although I didn't stay long I made sure to take a ride on the Metro. Well, to be honest, it was the easiest o get from the Gare de Lyon to the Gare du Nord. Considering I've been to Paris what must be getting on for a dozen or so times, I've rarely used the Metro. Most of the times have been part of school coach trips, so you can see that I do have an excuse. Still, the Metro is to me an aristocrat among Metro systems. It's the busiest in Western Europe, and regularly rated the best in the world by those in the know.

This next sketch is older than the previous three, even though it's from a trip that I made only last year. This is the Prague Metro. It's pretty modern, efficient, and well, I don't know I'd go quite as far as saying soulless, but it certainly lacks poetry. There is no advertising on the platforms which are rather dimly lit, and a little bleak. To be fair the rolling stock is painted a cheery white and read, but after I'd taken my first couple of trips I far preferred to use the city's extensive tram network. I didn't find the trains to be the most comfortable items on the menu, if you know what I mean. 

Now, a few months after my trip to Prague, I spent a wonderful week in Berlin. People in general might not rate Berlin in the top drawer with Paris as a destination, but I think it's a truly wonderful city. It has two Metro systems, for a start. The U-Bahn is what most people mean when they talk about Berlin's Underground railway system. However the S-bahn, shown in the first sketch made at Postammerplatz Station, also runs underground through the centre of the city, and for my money, it's another metro system - but again, you call it a suburban railway or some such if it makes you happy. The second sketch was made on a U-Bahn train I took out to see Berlin's Olympia Stadion - the stadium built for Hitler's Olympics of

1936. I have to say that the journey actually reminded me of sections of the Piccadilly Line after it emerges from

underground just after Earl's Court. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if Berliners have the same attitude to social intercourse on the train that their London counterparts do. However, on this same trip a couple of buskers got on and started singing and strumming, and . . . they were really good! I gave them some euros, but nobody else even acknowledged their presence. You can see from the sketch that the layout of the carriage interiors is pretty similar to those in Metros all over the world.

If we're talking about similar Metro systems, then I had much the same feelings about Budapest's as I had about Prague's. Actually Budapest's Metro is much older, the oldest in continental Europe, and the second oldest in the whole

wide world. And to be fair the original line, Line 1, does make a virtue of this. However, most of the stations I used were drab stainless steel and concrete affairs, and the trains looked as if they were remnants from the communist era - and in all probability they were. I don't often sketch with biro any more, but I used biro for this sketch to see if I could make anything near as decent as my ink sketches. As you can doubtless see from the results, the answer is a resounding no, I can't. I don't know why it is, but too many of the continental metro systems that I've used seem to take dull functionality as their watchword. So much so that they could make a massive difference, b for the most part just by having more advertising posters on and opposite the platforms.

The first sketch I made, in Deak Ferenc Ter, right in the centre of the city, I made in biro. I did my best with it didn't really work out for me. This is why I went on to make the sketch on the left. If anything I've been a little too successful with it, because it doesn't really manage to convey the drabness of the system. It's a shame because to me the system seemed pretty efficient, but not the sort of thing which would ever inspire the sot of affection I feel for the Tube.

This is not, thankfully, a criticism that I'd make of the Madrid Metro. In a number of ways, this is the

continental metro system I've used which most reminds me of the London Underground, which will always be my romantic ideal of what a metro system should be like, thanks to a childhood growing up in suburban West London. For one thing, they know how to light platforms properly. They're not adverse to allowing a bit of advertising and giving the walls a lick of paint, and this all makes a difference. I'll be honest, I only made this quick and somewhat impressionistic urban sketch while I was using the metros in Madrid. As a quick sketch it really isn't that bad, but its shortcomings did lead to me making this fa more detailed sketch a little later down the line (metaphorically, not literally.) 

So we come to Amsterdam, and I'm afraid another system which, while quick, cheap and very efficient, proved to be very antiseptic and soulless. Have a look at the sketch I made in Rokin station, and see whether you agree or not.


The next two sketches were made I Stockholm, Sweden. I would imagine that creating the T Bana, Stockholm's Metro, must have been quite difficult, since Stockholm itself is built on 14 islands. With three lines, it certainly isn't the most extensive metro system I've ever used, but it's not the smallest and least useful either. The system dates back to 1950, and some of the oldest rolling stock - which you can see in the first of the two sketches - looks to have been around for a lot of that time. It actually reminds me a lot of the cars in use on both the Budapest Metro and the Prague Metro.
The proud boast of the Stockholm T Bana is that its stations form the world's biggest art gallery. Well, I'm not sure about that, but certainly many of the underground stations have escalator tunnels which have been intricately carved and decorated, although the platforms themselves are rather bleak and unwelcoming.
Like Berlin, as well as the recognised metro system, the T Bana, Stockholm also has commuter lines which run underground through the city - the splendidly named Pendeltag. As with the Berlin S Bahn, as far as I'm concerned it goes underground through Stockholm, so it's another Underground railway. I found Stockholm to be one of the most expensive cities I've visited on my sketching travels, although one of the best, I don't mind admitting. The combined public transport 72 hour ticket, which also included trams and ferried, then, was probably the best value that I had for my whole time in the city.

On reflection, I think I'd probably say something similar about Vienna's U Bahn. The big difference being that Stockholm's centre only has the one tram route, while Vienna is very bountifully provided with tram routes, so the U

Bahn isn't necessarily as essential as the T Bana. I didn't find the modern platforms quite so bleak and unappealing as Amsterdam's , but it was very difficult to sketch the trains underground. In fact I didn't try. I took a ride to one end of the line, which was overground, and this proved much better. Like Berlin, Vienna does have its S Bahn too, but I never quite got round to riding on it unfortunately. One thing which interested me about the U Bahn is that it seems very much an 'honour' system. Basically, you're trusted to have a valid ticket for the journey. And while there are places where this probably wouldn't work, it seems to work perfectly well in Vienna.

2 and a half years passed between me riding the Vienna U Bahn, and riding my next metro system in continental Europe. This was the Warsaw Metro in early 2022. I was quite struck by the interesting architecture on the surface of stations like this one at Universityet. Let's be honest , a lot of systems just leave holes in the ground as holes in the grounds, or at most with a simple canopy over the top. 


As for the stations themselves, well I can't say that there seemed that much to differentiate them from other European metros I've used .Perfectly serviceable, but rather uninspiring. Of course that's just my opinion, and the best advice that I can give to you is to go there and check the place out for yourself. 

This isn't a bad sketch, but I wanted to make a more detailed sketch of the metro train itself. So I made this one below:-

Copenhagen Metro 2023

The Copenhagen Metro us very much a child of the 21st century. The earliest lines opened for the first time as recently as 2002. In some ways it's quite distinctive. The trains are all just 3 cars long, and this means the platforms are all extremely short. In every station glass doors and barriers keep the passengers safe. The great benefit of the short trains is that the trains are incredibly frequent. The trains are driverless, like the Docklands Light Railway, so if you manage to get a seat at the front you have a great view. Another benefit is that the M2 yellow line goes as far as the airport. All to the good. It does its job as a metro system extremely well. 

The drawbacks? Well, the platforms are nondescript, as is the case with many of the newer European Metro systems I've used. It's all chrome, glass and black walls. There's nowhere to sit, but then the trains are so frequent that's no an issue. Above ground, the stations in the centre are just ubiquitous liftshafts and concrete stairways up to street level. Even where the platforms are above ground on the outskirts of the city there's really not a great deal more to them than 2 covered platforms and a stairway and liftshaft/