Train kept a-rollin’

Choo-choo, woo-woo! Another small segment from a larger work (also featured in its entirety in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora). No date attributed to this work, nor is it titled, but its whistle has a familiar refrain. Jim Flora’s affinity for the railroad yard and its denizens dates back to the mid-1930s when he returned to his home state of Ohio after exploring a brief scholarship granted to him by the Boston Architectural League, unfortunately cut short by economic hardships of the Depression. Flora’s uncle, a night foreman for the Cincinnati Railroad Terminal Roundhouse, procured the architectural dropout a job wiping soot from steam locomotives for 25 cents an hour. It was nephew Jim’s rent gig for the next two years while he attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati.