Steam and Smoke, watercolour, (18.5x27.5cm)

Journey across India by rail with Ken Howard, OBE, RA as he describes his three-month painting trip travelling by steam train.

'As a boy I lived in northwest London and like many other ten and eleven year olds collected train numbers,' says Ken Howard.

'However, I soon became bored with the long hours of waiting and started to draw the trains. Thus began my love of painting and also a lifelong fascination with railways and the romance of steam.'

Painting in India

'So it was that forty years later I found myself arriving at Delhi airport at five o'clock in the morning to start a three month trip to paint and draw India in general but the railways in particular.

'In the intervening years steam railways had disappeared from the English land­scape and although I painted Southall Sidings for three years in the sixties, my memory of steam railway images had become almost as evanescent as their smoke.

'I had planned my time-table and had already obtained from the Indian Railways Board an authorisation to visit Delhi Junction and other centres in the north.

'Strangely enough the first thing that struck me as we pulled into the station was not something that I could see but a particular smell I had long since forgotten, yet when it reached my nostrils those forty years rolled away and I was a boy again at Neasden sidings.'

Lucknow, watercolour, (28.5x38cm)

'We picked our way across the railway track to Delhi Junction's loco shed where I wanted to work. We met the loco foreman, Mr. Maharajam, and I made my arrangements for the following day.

'As I looked across the sidings I recognised the images which had so excited me as a boy - the pattern of lines in the sky from the telegraph wires, the lines of electrical cables, the wonderful harmony of greys in the ash on the ground, dark ash crisscrossed with light­ reflecting railway lines, the massive black shape of the loco shed.

'No coal hoppers this time; instead there was an old-fashioned crane for loading coal on to the engines, looming up beside the watering points and the massive shapes of the locomotives themselves.

'These Indian trains were much more beautiful than those I remembered in England - at least they were from a painter's rather than a railway buff's point of view.

'They were older and more patched up than the shiny trains of my youth. But as with so many things, the older and the more affected by the patina of age, the more visually exciting-a bit like people, I thought. If I had asked, I knew that the Indian Railways officials would have shown off to me the beauties of their fleet. But I was not looking for these; I wanted to paint working engines and I longed to start work with more anticipation than I had felt about a subject for years.'

Morning Light, Jhansi, watercolour, (13.5x19cm)

Disappointments

'As is often the case, the first day's work was a disappointment.

'Maybe it was too many years of anticipation; the result had to fail. Maybe it was that all my materials had not yet arrived and I had no Chinese white-almost a must with these giant steamy smoking subjects. Maybe it was because just as I finished my first watercolour a great monster rolled past me, all steam and smoke, and deposited a wet soot all over my watercolour and all over me.

'I worked quite small that day, about five by seven inches. I usually start on a small scale to get the feel of the medium again. And railway subjects are always moving, so it would have been ridiculous to try and capture the scene in a larger size. The light was superb; a very thin mist diffused the December sunlight.

'I was not really so interested in the trains themselves but much more in the steam and the smoke surrounding them-as if they were steaming hot animals.

'As the day went on I began to work with my colours kept more and more wet in order to try and capture this diffused smoke and light; as it got later the day became a subtle pink and gold, and the smoke and steam more blue.

'I finished painting disappointed but wanting the next day to come so that I could try again.'

Changing techniques

'Over the years l have learned that it is no good trying to fit one technique and palette to every subject.

'Each must be approached anew as if you are working for the first time. I went to India believing that the strong contrasts I had experienced in Cyprus would be there too-the ubiquitous white walls against pinky-blue skies-but it was completely different.

'Instead of my colour being fairly dry and opaque in the lights, my paint became wetter. I found myself using a piece of rag a lot and running one colour into another whilst it was still wet.'

A tide of humanity

'Railway subjects are not just about trains. Apart from the Indian railway workers in their dark blue or black, the sidings are frequented by women in bright saris picking through the ash for unused coal.

'Somehow this epitomized for me what I was to experience in India over the next months - the contrast between the bright and the dark side of India.

'It was the most exciting country I had ever visited, particularly in its people and its light. Yet these very people nearly drove me on to a plane on more than one occasion. Their curiosity is boundless; sit down in India to paint and you are immediately engulfed in humanity.'

Sketchbook pencil drawings in the train en-route to Delhi

Bhiwani Junction

'My next railway location I arrived at by accident. I had travelled south to work for an Indian cavalry regiment but because of the lack of pre-arranged security clearance, these plans did not materialise.

'Although this depressed me after travelling so far, I decided to stay on for a few days and work at the local railway centre, Jhansi Loco.

'To say I was bowled over by it would be an understatement. If I say that up to that moment the two places in the world I had found most visually stimulating were Venice and Khatmandu, then you can image the splendor of this great 'Bhiwani Junction ' if I were to call it their equal.

'Here were the great Indian locos coming for a boiler clean, a dry wash, or a hot wash. Here was the long running shed with shafts of light cutting through the openings in the roof. Here stood the cream of the great Indian trains; in the loco foreman's office hung a photograph of the 'champion' - best on presentation and performance - one of his trains. And here the shrill scream of whistles being checked or signaling departures hung in the air.'

Lucknow

'Two weeks later I found myself at Lucknow, another feast for the eyes and a strange juxta­position of machines and animals.

'Buffalo and steer roamed among the railway behemoths not in the least disturbed by the sudden gushes of steam and smoke and the noise of the whistles.

'Wild monkeys sat on top of the shed and I was warned to put out of their sight anything I wasn't using.

'In the large repair shed the locos were stripped down and serviced by dark sweating figures and the interior was not unlike a plate out of an old book on the Industrial Revolution. Here was life and action; here was all the romance of steam.

'Sometimes I would be surrounded by thirty or so men watching me work, but I was so engrossed that nothing could distract me and even when a passing loco again covered both me and my work with wet soot, I simply could not get upset.

'The experience was so vivid, I felt it was enough in itself; the painting was simply a by-product of the most extraordinary emotion I had ever felt as a painter-it was a privilege just to be there.

'I knew at Lucknow that I would return to India despite the difficulties: the constant discomfort with one's stomach and with bureaucracy, and that I would put up with it all to get this visual 'shot in the arm'-this inspiration, if you like-that the Indian railways gave me.

The joy of travel

'Aside from the obvious beauty of the sheds and sidings, there was also the exhilaration of travelling by train. On my return from Jhansi back to Delhi I went second class although I had been warned against the idea.

'Here was another world of colour, movement and excitement. I settled myself in the carriage, and began to draw in my sketchbook (see image above).

'Immediately curious people gathered around but rather than disturbing me they asked me to draw them. Thus passed a magical five-hour journey, with more models than I could use: old men in traditional costume, women in jewel bright saris, wonderful doe­ eyed children.'

Steam and Smoke, watercolour, (18.5x27.5cm)

'As my departure grew closer I returned to the railway offices in Delhi to thank the man who in arranging everything for me had been helpful beyond the call of duty.

'As a mark of my appreciation I had already decided that I would present him with a small watercolour. He was surprised, grateful, and pleased.

'"That train in your picture has just been in for a three-month service," he said. 'How do you know? 'I asked him. "It's the colour of the smoke" he replied. "Only after a thorough clean when the engine starts again is the smoke that particular colour".'

'And that remark gave me an enormous thrill. I felt that if I could paint the truth that was recognised by an expert, I had achieved the sort of truth that comes from keen observation, from painting from life.'

This feature is taken from the June 1984 issue of The Artist