In an effort to track down more information about this charming print, I called the C&O Historical Society. They were incredibly friendly and helpful, and here’s what they said:”The print appears to be of one of the paintings that was commissioned by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway for use in the new cars on their post-war streamliner that was to be instituted between Washington and Cincinnati for daylight travel from serving the major cities along that route, but to primarily to provide convenient daylight arrival at White Sulphur Springs, WV to serve guests of The Greenbrier, C&O’s famous resort. The train was to be called The Chessie and while its equipment was all built and delivered to the C&O in 1948, the passenger train market was drastically changing, with air travel coming into favor, and the train was never actually operated as intended. Some of the equipment served on C&O for a short period, as they waited delivery for other new equipment that was designed to modernize their other long-distance mainline passenger trains. Eventually almost all of the cars from the 1948 group were sold to other railroads and served well into the 1970s and even went into Amtrak service in 1971.

Generally,each of the coaches built for The Chessie, had a display case incorporated in its interior to contain and exhibit original paintings of scenes along the C&O route that the train would travel. The Paul Sample painting was one of those pieces of art. C&O had art prints, suitable for framing, produced for all of the paintings in the collection and they were available to persons who were interested in obraining them. Whether they were sold or provided as gifts, I am not certain, and I am not sure how many were produced. The B&O Museum in Baltimore sold prints in their gift shop in the late 1960s and 70s.”

The question remains: Where is the original?

As of today, this post is the only record in cyberland of this particular work by Sample.