London's Underground Mail Trains (Original)

Artist: Harry Green
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 18" x 12" (460mm x 310mm)
Date: 1980
Code: GreenPOTube

This is the unique original Gouache painting by Harry Green.

Mail from the railway stations to the sorting offices, and then onwards to its destination speeds beneath the busy streets of London along an underground railway few people ever see. The service started in 1927 but was moth-balled in 2003 as the Post Office estimated it cost five times as much as road transport.

It didn't help that five of the original sorting offices of the original eight had been relocated. The right-hand inset shows the construction of tube lines as of the 1970s while the left shows the style of train used by the Post Office.

This art was published in Look and Learn #946 8th March 1980.

• Artist Biography
  Harry Green (born 1920; UK)
  A little-known artist, Harry Green contributed extensively to Look and Learn in the 1970s and 1980s, illustrating a variety of subjects ranging from historical buildings to football. However, it was as a transport illustrator that he really made his mark in the 1980 with the series "Britain's Railway Wonders". Green also contributed illustrations to Speed & Power in the 1970s.
  
  His book illustrations include Architecture (1969), Architecture: The Great Art of Building (1969), Discovery of Australia (1969) and Discovery of South America (1970), some of which were jointly illustrated by Gwen Green who was also a prolific children's educational book illustrator.