The Picturesque Railway

Abstract

In spite of protests from some who feared its impact on the landscape, the railroad often settled into its surroundings without inflicting lasting damage. Contemporary artists, and those responsible for railway buildings and structures, contributed to a widespread perception of the railroad as an acceptable feature even of the ‘Picturesque’ landscape, an aesthetic ideal typified by pastoral scenes including evidence of human activity. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while usage of the term ‘Picturesque’ became looser, the railroad was associated less and less with Modernity, and rural lines and steam trains in particular came to be seen as relics from the past, and as picturesque in their own right. The railroad in the landscape, an evocative image of a transient reality, poignantly represents a short-lived harmony of the natural world and human endeavour.