A locomotive or train can play many roles in art, for example:
As a work of art in itself in addition to most functional considerations, especially in streamlined steam locomotives and luxury passenger accommodations of the early 20th century, known also as the Machine Age
As a subject for a novel or film
As a metaphor in song or poetry, particularly for physical power or directed movement (physical, romantic or other), as in "Fisherman's Blues":
..."
I wish I was the brakeman
on a hurtling, fevered train
crashing headlong into the heartland
like a cannon in the rain''...
In 1978, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris held the exhibition "Les Temps des Gares" with the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the National Railway Museum in York, and the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.
In 2008, Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery held an exhibition entitled: "Art in the Age of Steam."
As the main subject of a painting, sculpture, or photograph
The following list is in chronological order, oldest to youngest:
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, by J. M. W. Turner, 1844
The Railway Station, by William Powell Frith, 1862
The Travelling Companions, by Augustus Egg, 1862
Lordship Lane Station, by Camille Pissarro, c. 1870
The Railway, by Édouard Manet, 1872
The railway station of Saint Lazare in Paris, by Claude Monet, c. 1877
Le Pont de l'Europe, by Gustave Caillebotte, 1880
Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley, by Paul Cézanne, 1882-1885
The Lineman, by L A Ring, 1884
The Anxious Journey, by Giorgio de Chirico, 1913
Railroad Sunset, by Edward Hopper, 1929
Time Transfixed, by René Magritte, 1938
In the United Kingdom the Guild of Railway Artists is a group of painters of railway subjects.
