Howard Fogg Biography

Howard Lockhart Fogg (April 7, 1917 – October 1, 1996) was an American artist specializing in railroad artwork. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. The family lived in Mountain Lake, New Jersey (Liberty Township) for a short time. It was at the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad station Howard sketched his first railroad subject. He was four years old at the time.. The family later moved to Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Fogg graduated from New Trier High School in 1934. In 1938, he graduated with honors from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in English literature. To pursue a career in cartooning, he enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in the fall of 1938. Fogg graduated from the Academy in the spring of 1939. Shortly afterward, he worked as a passenger information clerk for the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1941, Baldwin Locomotive Works hired him as an apprentice engineer. Drafted into the Army in 1941, Howard was assigned to the 4th Armored Division at Watertown in upper New York State. But the Army Air Corps needed pilots, so Howard requested a transfer. He received basic flight training at Parks Air College in St. Louis, primary training at Vance Army Air.

As the diesel locomotives rolled out of the American Locomotive Company plant in Schenectady, New York in the 1940's, 50's and early 60's, Howard Fogg was commissioned to paint locomotive after locomotive. Of these numerous paintings, Alco had some forty-eight reproduced. Without doubt, Fogg was the outstanding artist painting trains. His capture of rolling stock as it passed through its native environment presents sheer beauty of both locomotive and background to the viewer. When Alco abandoned steam locomotive production in 1948 in favor of the diesel, the company had built more than 75,000 steamers.