This artwork is one of the top 20 UK railway artworks voted for by the public as part of Railway 200.

'A portrait of one of Britain's finest Pacifics. A grand, straightforward job, on the face of it.' This is how Terence Cuneo described The Day Begins, his striking oil painting of a gleaming locomotive completed in 1946.

The work was commissioned by the London Midland and Scottish Railway to form the basis of a poster advertising their services. As we will see, Cuneo's work on this striking picture was not quite as straightforward as he had anticipated.

Cuneo certainly celebrates the Princess Coronation class 4 6-2 Pacific (No. 6255) that the painting captures – it appears in the centre of the canvas, cutting boldly across it on a diagonal line. We see it from a low perspective, so that the train seems to loom over both us and the workers who surround it. Rays of sunlight project down onto the front of the train, mingling with the steam it releases.

Flashes of red draw the eye – a dynamic stripe running along the side of the train, a flag placed in front of it and the red-orange glow of a fire emanating from the engine room.

Cuneo was no stranger to railway art – it is the genre with which he is most associated. During the Second World War, he was employed as a war artist with his work often appearing across the pages of the popular Illustrated London News.

He also produced propaganda paintings for the Ministry of Information, as well as the intelligence department of the Foreign Office and the War Artists' Advisory Committee.

The Royal Engineers Clearing the Mine Fields at the Start of the Battle of El Alamein, 23 October 1942

Impressed by this wartime art, the publicity manager of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) commissioned Cuneo's first work for a poster. This was the start of a relationship that would last for half a century. In the decades that followed, Cuneo's work appeared on railway posters up and down the country.

Giants Refreshed: Pacifics in the Doncaster Locomotive Works

As Peter Collins has pointed out, Cuneo painted not only the latest trains but 'captured the early days of railways' with paintings such as The Penydarren Tramod Locomotive celebrating beautiful trains from the 1800s.

At the other end of the spectrum, Cueno also had an eye to the future – when he died in 1996, he was in the middle of working on a painting of the channel tunnel which had opened just two years earlier.

Cuneo's largest canvas, measuring 20 ft x 10 ft was commissioned by The Science Museum in 1967. Capturing a panoramic view of Waterloo Station, it can now be seen at the National Railway Museum where it was installed in 2007 during the celebration of Cuneo's centenary year.

We know a lot about the circumstances surrounding The Day Begins because Terence Cuneo wrote a humorous account of his work on the painting. Entitled 'Sunday session', this article was published in commercial art magazine Art and Industry in June 1948. In this piece, Cuneo describes how this apparently straightforward commission was, in fact, immensely stressful.

After much deliberation, Cuneo explains, he decided that his painting would feature the interior of the Round-shed at Willesden depot, captured here by fellow railway artist David Shepherd.

'There was something about that great shed, with its radiating tracks and quietly breathing locomotives that fascinated me', Cuneo says. He arranged to turn up on a Sunday morning when he was promised the shed would be 'as quiet as a church' and a Class 7 'City' train would be 'laid on' for him to study and sketch. He would then work up the painting back at his studio.

Trouble began with bad weather. Cuneo says: 'It was pelting, and visibility was putrid... everything was enveloped in a grey haze.' More alarmingly, there was no sign of the train he had been promised – it was delayed due to the bad weather.

As rain dripped down his neck, Cuneo sat on his 'prearranged throne... a tower wagon opposite the exit track' while a stand-in train – the T. B. Scott – was arranged for him. Here, too, there was trouble – the replacement train was too long and could not be placed in the correct position. Yet another replacement train – this time a Class 5 – was found: 'To a series of wild gesticulations from me, the long-suffering shed crew manhandled the table, back and round, round and back. They started. Stopped, and started again.'

Just as the train had been placed in a perfect position, what should appear but the original 'City' that Cuneo had been promised! 'I sprung from my chair', the artist says, 'and nearly pole-axed myself on the corner of the smoke hood above. Through a star-spangled agony, a voice hailed me: "Then you won't be needin' this 'ere injun after all?"'

Eventually 'the stately 'City of Hereford' was put in place – her steel body glistening with rain and stained with grime'. Now Cuneo had to find the right angle. He explains: 'Somehow the 'City' didn't thrill me from above. I called a halt and descended to the ground. Here, by heaven, she looked magnificent! I rushed hungrily around the shed, stopping here, crouching there. I grovelled in greasy pits, clambered on to buffers, went up on the cab roof of a Class 6, and even descended the well of the turntable.'

The by-now somewhat exasperated crew gazed on. 'Their eyes – eloquent with unspoken words – followed where'er I went', says Cuneo, adding: 'The air was heavy with toleration.' Eventually, the artist found the right angle and floodlights were erected in the perfect spot. He finally was ready to start. The artist then began sketching, all while fending off a series of interruptions – water dripped onto his sketchbook, and he had to fend off irritating workers in the shed.

1968, bromide print photograph by Godfrey Argent (1937–2006)

After lunch, he was alarmed when staff indicated that the train would soon need to be off again. He had expected several more hours to complete his colour notes, which he was forced to finish in just three-quarters of an hour. He ran around scrawling 'frantic notes' as steam started to roar from the safety valve and the 'City' gave 'a warning toot on her whistle'. Cuneo ends his account with the following lines:

'I grabbed a hand-rail and climbed into the cab as the engine trundled down the exit track. Slowly, through rain and gathering dusk, we wound our way to the end of the yards. The engine stopped at a group of dwarf signals just long enough for me to climb down. Then she was moving away again dissolving into the evening mist. MY model, for the day.'

Despite the stressful circumstances under which the work was produced, The Day Begins shows no signs of the bad weather, thick smog and delayed trains experienced by Cuneo on that Sunday morning in 1946. Instead, it is a celebration of the might and nobility of the railway – a fine example of poster art that today inspires a sense of nostalgia for a very different age of travel.

Anna Maria Barry, writer

This content was funded by Railway 200

Further reading

Terence Cuneo, 'Sunday session' in Art and Industry, June 1948

Science Museum Group, 'The Day Begins', Science Museum Group Collection Online

Beverley Cole, 'Cuneo, Terence Tenison', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004

Peter Collins, 'Terence Cuneo: The Man and Perceptions of Technology' in International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, Vol. 79:1, 2009

About Railway 200

Railway 200 is a cross-industry, UK Government-backed, partner-led celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway, commemorating the opening by George Stephenson of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the North East of England in 1825, a journey that changed the world forever. It explores the past, present and future of rail, and how it has shaped our lives and livelihoods. Numerous activities and events are planned throughout 2025, many of which are listed at www.railway200.co.uk