OK, it's not "technical" as such, but I think it's preservation oriented in outlook enough to justify it being posted here--an essay by railroad artist J. Craig Thorpe on his recent commissions for paintings for Amtrak's marketing department, in which he touches on preservation as a way to see ourselves:

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/20 ... ilder22911

Maybe we preservationists have a much larger commission than we realize. . .

I like the man's work, and I'm pretty hard to please (as I'm an artist myself). He did a nice poster for the recent anniversary of Amtrak and was on their display train when it was in Seattle to sign prints of it. Really nice guy, too!

He gave a presentation on this at the Tacoma NRHS convention a couple of years ago. It was one of the best seminars of the convention, at least in my opinion.

He had a lot more slides and went into additional details, very enjoyable.

Stumbled across this going through James Porterfield's Facebook page (Mr. Porterfield is the author of "Dining By Rail," and is also the head of the Center For Railroad Tourism at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va.), and thought it might be of interest here:

http://gilbennett.com/Home_Page.php

Some pages from within the site that may intrigue:

http://gilbennett.com/Anatomy_of_a_Painting.php

http://gilbennett.com/Originals.php

http://gilbennett.com/Howard_Fogg_s_paintings.php

http://gilbennett.com/Miner_and_Bennett_5SMV.html