CRESSON, Pa. – Noted railroad painter and illustrator J. Craig Thorpe will conduct a three-day artists’ workshop at The Station Inn railfan bed & breakfast in Cresson Aug. 23-25.
Open to artists of all levels, the event will combine working experiences with discussions of approach, style, composition, form, lighting, and perspective. Those attending will visit the nearby Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona and the Everett Railroad in Hollidaysburg to sketch or paint indoor or outdoor subjects of their choice.
Accommodations range from private rooms starting at $600 to dorm-style quarters at $450. Local artists not requiring lodging can register for $275. Prices include workshop fees, all admission fees, Friday dinner, Saturday and Sunday breakfast, and Sunday lunch.
Thorpe is the second artist-in-residence to visit the Inn since Alex and Leah Lang purchased the Inn in 2022 and started an artist-in-residence program in 2023, following New Jersey photographer Michael Froio last year.
Having worked for Amtrak, General Electric, state departments of transportation, Union Tank Car, museums, tourist railroads, and dozens of private commissions, Thorpe will discuss his craft and coach artists through exercises and demonstrations. The weekend is intended to help them interpret the railroad scene in whatever media they choose to bring, which Thorpe said could include “pastels, colored pencils, ink, graphite, watercolor, oils, it’s up to them.”
“I want to use the drawing times to help students do sketches – walk around, comment on, and help people in their actual production of drawings or a refined painting,” he said. Discussion sessions will center on “where the guests are in their own development of railroad art,” he said.
A native of the South Hills of Pittsburgh, Thorpe graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in industrial design. His interest in railroading started when his grandfather took him on rides aboard Pittsburgh Railways Co. PCC trolley cars and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Budd RDC commuter trains. He also has been associated with the East Broad Top Railroad as a promoter, artist, and informal docent. Most recently, he painted an oil-on-canvas scene showing EBT 2-8-2 Mikado steam engine No. 16, which the railroad restored to operation in 2023, and the carrier’s M-1 gas-electric car.
He plans to discuss that and other recent works with a Pennsylvania theme, including Reading & Northern Railroad’s 4-8-4 steam engine No. 2102 and the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum’s PCC Car No. 1713 wearing its 1970s-era Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team paint scheme.
His 206-page book “Railroads, Art and American Life,” published by Indiana University Press last year, is an autobiographical review of his approach to painting “the past, the present and the possible.”
Living in Bellevue, Wash., Thorpe and his wife Cathy are the parents of three adult children and the grandparents of two grandchildren.
The Station Inn, a railfan bed & breakfast founded by Tom Davis in 1993, is located at 827 Front Street in Cresson, with its front porch facing the former Pennsylvania Railroad, now Norfolk Southern, main line. Group meetings during the artists’ weekend will be held in the Inn’s Yard Office Lounge event space.
Interested artists can register or get further information at The Station Inn at 814-886-4757.
If I recall correctly, an artist visiting the Station Inn was an impetus for Norfolk Southern’s major repaint of locos in their heritage paint schemes. He drew his thoughts of what a wide range of heritage locos could look like, and many designs were used as is or slightly modified in the actual project.