Night Scene at an American Railway Junction: Lightning Express, Flying Mail and Owl Trains, "On Time"

Starting in 1853, Nathaniel Currier (and later Currier & Ives) published thirty prints featuring trains for Americans who wanted pictures of the then-modern mode of transportation that provided a convenient way to travel and ship goods around the country. For nineteenth-century viewers, such prints showed how the railroad was an instrument of social and economic change transforming rural America -- a country that was a century old when this print was made. This dramatic moonlit night scene presents a busy railway junction on the outskirts of a river city (indicated in the distance), which some scholars have identified as Saint Louis, Missouri, a major port on the Mississippi River. In the foreground, on three parallel tracks, two locomotives (with black smoke belching from flaired smokestacks above bright headlight beams) flank the rear of a passenger car, where a conductor stands as he turns a hand wheel. On the tracks nearby, a man stands holding a lantern. On the boardwalk platform at the far left, men move large crates, boxes of goods, and trunks. At the far right, the locomotive headlight illuminates pedestrians near the station building. Among additional captivating details, the print also shows more trains on tracks in the central background, as well as three telegraph poles at the upper right.

Nathaniel Currier, who founded his successful New York-based lithography firm in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel recruited his younger brother Charles into the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907.