Nov 12, 2007 - Sale 2128

Sale 2128 - Lot 94

Price Realized: $ 3,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
TERENCE CUNEO (1907-1996) AN ENGINE IS WHEELED.
40x49 3/4 inches. Waterlow & Sons Limited, London.
Condition B+: minor wrinkles, restoration and repaired tears in margins; abrasions in image; minor skinning in margins.
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, as opposed to them being carried behind in a tender. Almost 400 of these locomotives were constructed between 1945 and 1951. Le Train p. 80-81.