Oct 10 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2681 -

Sale 2681 - Lot 136

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

TERENCE CUNEO (1907-1996)

AN ENGINE IS WHEELED / DERBY LOCOMOTIVE WORKS. Circa 1955.

39¾x49½ inches, 101x125¾ cm. Waterlow & Sons Limited, London.
Condition A-: expert overpainting in margins and around text; minor restoration along vertical and horizontal folds.

From as early as the 1840s, Derby was the site of maintenance workshops for the newly formed Midland Railway, and remained as such even when the company merged into the London Midland and Scotland Railway in 1923. When the railway companies were nationalized in 1948, the Derby Works became part of the British Railway system. Cuneo was a masterful painter of railroad images and locomotives, and many of his paintings were turned into posters for the British Railway. Given Cuneo's love of detail, we can determine that the engine being wheeled here is the 2-6-4T, the Fairburn Tank. The numbers (from the Whyte Classification) pertain to the wheel arrangement; two small leading wheels, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels. The "T" stands for Tank Engine, meaning that it carries its own fuel and water, rather than having them behind in a tender. Almost 400 of these locomotives were constructed between 1945 and 1951.

Le Train p. 80-81.
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