Thursday, 8 September 2011

The Busy Junction

Busy railway junctions have proved to be very popular with artists and jigsaw manufacturers over many years. A location with many railway lines, converging or otherwise, offers the potential for more traffic and the two jigsaws chosen from my collection for today's post, 8th September 2011, show this potential to real effect.

Picture one shows one of my favourite puzzles of this type, a 200-piece wooden example from Victory titled Southern Railway Atlantic Coast Express. The location is Seaton Junction, East Devon but the artist is not named. The painting appears to be a direct copy, in colour, of a monochrome photograph in the collection of the Royal Air Force Museum. The photograph, titled A busy scene at Seaton Junction, is accompanied by the following legend "Southern Railway King Arthur class N15 locomotive E451 Sir Lamorack with an express passing S15 824 light engine and 0-4-2 D Class on a local train". The same junction is featured in Barry Freeman's painting Heavyweights at Seaton reproduced as a 1000-piece puzzle by Gibsons - this puzzle was featured in the post of 13th July.


The Busy Junction, a 400-piece jigsaw from Good Companion is shown in the second picture. The jigsaw shows a busy East Coast Main Line with 'A1' class locomotive No.60130 Kestrel hauling a passenger train passing a similar train hauled by a main line diesel locomotive. The artist is not named**. Above, a long freight train crosses the main line over an arched girder bridge linked to a long brick viaduct. The locomotive is a mixed traffic type but the number, on the smokebox door, is unclear. It may be No.60800 Green Arrow, one of (Sir) Nigel Gresley's 'V2' class 2-6-2 workhorses. Arthur Peppercorn, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London & North Eastern Railway from 1946 until nationalisation of the railways in 1948, designed forty-nine 'A1's, delivered after nationalisation.

** I have been reliably informed by Jez Gunnell that the artist is T. E. North. Jez is the owner of the original artwork signed by the artist. Thanks for the information. This adds to the many other pieces of North's artwork reproduced by Good Companion.