The Kalmbach Art Collection: Pairing Words and Imagery

For the ninety years spanning 1934 to 2024, Kalmbach Publishing Co. (later Kalmbach Media) was a national leader in railroad publications with its books and flagship magazines, Trains and Model Railroader. Editors like David P.Morgan helped shape the visual culture of railroading. The company amassed a collection of more than fifty original paintings and drawings, their creators a who’s who of railroad artists. Following the sale of Kalmbach to Firecrown Media in 2024, the company donated the Kalmbach Art Collection to the Center for Railroad Photography & Art, which now preserves and shares the artwork through a traveling exhibition and this publication.

Scott Lothes is the executive directer of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art and editor of its journal, Railroad Heritage. He also helps write, edit, and produce the Center’s books. He grew up in West Virginia and earned a B.S. degree in mechanical engineer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His photographs and articles appear frequently in railroad magazines and other publications, and he has made numerous presentations to railroad and travel groups. Prior to joining the Center, he spent three years as assistant editor of the engineering magazine Sound & Vibration and one year as an English teacher at a high school in Sapporo, Japan. Ted Rose, 1940-2002, was a gifted artist who worked summers in the Kalmbach art department while studying art at the University of Illinois. He grew up in Milwaukee, where he learned about art from his father, an architect, and about railroading from the Milwaukee Road, Chicago & North Western, and North Shore. During his late teens and early twenties, he traveled all over North America photographing steam locomotives. Following army service in Vietnam, Rose settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and worked as an illustrator for the city. After a decade-plus hiatus, he resumed painting trains around 1980 and worked feverishly until cancer claimed him at the age of sixty-one.Gil Reid, 1918-2007, worked in Kalmbach’s art department from 1957 until 1978, ultimately becoming the company’s assistant art director. He grew up along the Pennsylvania Railroad in Indiana, and he studied art at both the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Miami University. He also served in the Army’s 10th Engineering Battalion during World War II, receiving a Purple Heart. He continued painting trains and railroads long after his tenure with Kalmbach, becoming one of the country’s foremost railroad artists. His vast railroad oeuvre includes creating the artwork for nineteen years of Amtrak calendars.Kevin P. Keefe was born in Chicago in 1951 and graduated from Michigan State University’s School of Journalism in 1973. At MSU, he was a key figure in the effort to restore Pere Marquette steam locomotive 1225, and his 2016 book for MSU Press, Twelve Twenty Five: The Life and Times of a Steam Locomotive, won the Library of Michigan’s prestigious Notable Books Award. In recent years he collaborated on books about railroad photographers Jim Shaughnessy, Wallace W. Abbey, and J. Parker Lamb. He has worked for daily newspapers in Michigan and Wisconsin, and as an associate editor and editor-in-chief (1992-2000) of Trains magazine. He retired in 2016 as Kalmbach Media’s vice president-editorial after twenty-nine years with the company.George Gloff, 1932-2021, grew up on Milwaukee’s west side along the city’s Route 16 streetcar line, a fortuitous fact given his lifelong interest in electric traction. He attended Milwaukee’s Boys Tech High School and later studied at the city’s famed Layton School of Art, which later became the Milwaukee Institute of Art& Design. One of his first jobs was doing graphic design for Milwaukee’s Speedrail interurban company. He joined Kalmbach Publishing Co.’s art staff in 1951 and became corporate art director in 1962, serving in that role, as well as on the company’s executive committee, until he retired in 1991. In addition to his accomplishments as a painter and magazine designer, he was a masterful cartographer, known for meticulously rendered, large-scale railroad maps.Howrd Fogg is often referred to as the dean of American railroad artists. He said of himself that he wasn’t an artist who painted trains, but a railroader with a paintbrush. He received a B.A. degree in English from Dartmouth and then attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. During World War II, he served with distinction as a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps, flying seventy-six combat missions over Europe. After the war, he worked twelve years as an illustrator for the American Locomotive Company. In 1955, he moved with his wife, Margot, and their three sons to Boulder, Colorado, where he worked independently as a railroad artist until his death. His vast output includes more than seventy paintings for Leanin’ Tree greeting cards and numerous commissions by railroad companies and executives, as well as authors and publishers.