Nostalgia & History > Fogg heads east: P&LE @ Port Perry PA ('64)

He labeled this shot of 3 P&LE GP's as '2/64 at Port Perry PA' ... a long way from his usual territory.

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Howard Fogg was commissioned in 1956 by P&LE President John Barringer to do paintings depicting the railroad's day to day operations. This 7 year project turned into a Booklet entitled "P&LE-Road to the Future" that contained 66 postcard views of Fogg's work. It is quite a body of work and really shows the P&LE  facilities and Steel Mills very well.  With the date of that photo as 2-64, maybe Fogg went back to recapture the scene from his original painting.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/21 09:34 by perklocal.

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Very nice, love this photo and all the Fogg PLE paintings...

JG

Thanks for sharing this fine Howard Fogg photo.  The train is eastbound, with U.S. Steel's Edgar Thomson Works in the background.  Howard Fogg must have had official permission from P&LE and/or US Steel, as this location would have been totally inaccessible without such permission.  This photo must have been taken the same day he took a photo previously posted of an eastbound B&O train passing through the same mill.  The location for the B&O photo would have been about 500 feet geographically north of the location of the P&LE photo.  Here is the link to the B&O photo - https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,5301347,5301890#msg-5301890

Steve Salamon
Valley City, OH

In addition to the postcards, some of Fogg's P & LE paintings were also produced as larger format prints.

cr7998 Wrote:
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> Thanks for sharing this fine Howard Fogg photo. 
> The train is eastbound, with U.S. Steel's Edgar
> Thomson Works in the background.  Howard Fogg
> must have had official permission from P&LE and/or
> US Steel, as this location would have been totally
> inaccessible without such permission. 

Howard Fogg regularly used photographs that he had taken as image resources for his paintings. In the case of the P&LE paintings, he had received a commission for creating them from John W. Barriger III, who was then president of the P&LE. I am quite sure that Howard had full permission to access this and many other sites, with permit letters signed by various appropriate officers both of the P&LE, and other industries that appear in the paintings, such as U.S. Steel, Jones & Laughlin Steel, Mesta Machine, and others. And those officials themselves had no doubt been personally requested by Mr. Barriger to extend every courtesy, and access where requested, to Mr. Fogg. His permissions were, in the language of diplomacy, "from the highest authority."

Those P&LE paintings have long been favorites of mine. My father, who was in industrial transportation, and whose company routed a fair amount of traffic via P&LE, received the leather-bound printed folio of the P&LE paintings as a gift from the railroad and John Barriger. My railfan interests were budding at that time while I was in high school, and my dad gave me the folio as a gift. One of my very greatest regrets is that somewhere along the way in subsequent years, and in the course of many moves around the country with my career, I somehow lost that folio. I've seen them on sale online and through antiquarian book dealers from time to time, at steep prices. And I have been sorely tempted to buy one despite the price tag. But I never have. It just wouldn't be the same. I could once again view those marvelous images. But it would always be with a deep tinge of regret that I had somehow lost a copy of that folio. Indeed, one that that John Barriger himself had presented to my dad. It just wouldn't be the same.

Later edit: It is particularly interesting and thrilling to see in this thread both Fogg's painting (one of my favorites of the P&LE series), and the color slide image that he apparently used as a source. That is really pretty incredible. Thank you, valmont, for doing the legwork to let us see both together. That's not only excellent work on the railroad history front, but also as a piece of art history, too. Art historians place a high premium on locating source images, sketches, notes and journals that illuminate the artist's source vision, and how it evolved from that source to the final work. Thanks to your work, valmont, we get to see here exactly how Howard Fogg's composition for the painting evolved from the color slide image. That is really quite special.

Thanks for sharing these images where Howard Fogg so evocatively captured moments in time, and at places that are now truly a former world. And, at least for me, a better world.

MC



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/21 06:11 by ironmtn.

I have that "P&LE-Road to the Future" book, or most of it at least.  I think only the covers are missing.  I would pour over that book and love to look at those pictures back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Still look at it occasionally even to this day!

When I saw those postcards some years ago, I almost thought of modeling the P&LE, but in N scale in my basement. I would have wanted to capture the large industries, multiple track, and railroad infrastructure. Howard's artwork was certainly inspiring. It was once a great railroad and profitable.

Victor