Trains of the Future

Adam Rowe

24 Feb 2025 • 3 min read

Peter Goodfellow

High-speed trains, elevated trains, magnetic trains – they're all cool concepts from a futuristic world that cares about the environment and efficient public transport. Plus, they just look good. Check out the "Moonline" here.

Shigeru Komatsuzaki, ‘Space train,’ 1981.

Or the double-decker train in this artwork by Don Lawrence, commissioned in 1989 to celebrate 100 years of the Netherlands' Dutch Railways (that's their logo on the side of the train).

I wonder if Lawrence took inspiration from this Klaus Bürgle illustration, which features a very similar double-decker train.

David Schleinkofer illustrated several future trains. Here are three of them, along with the captions he gave them on Flickr.

"I painted this for Science Digest Magazine in the 80's. It shows a futuristic train that could fly through a vacuum tunnel at 600 miles an hour."

"This was an advertising job I did for Champion International. It was also used in an exhibit on future cities at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA."

"This was painted for a Science Digest magazine article on SUPER SUBWAY and appeared on pages 72-73. It measures 13" x 14" and is for sale. It appeared in the May 1981 issue."

A theme is emerging here: Magazines love doing articles about the transportation of the future.

Here's Gray Morrow's depiction of a train, taken from a set of his illustrations for “The Transport Revolution,” a feature in Playboy, October 1970.

Here's Barclay Shaw's stylish illustration for "Trains of Tomorrow," in Future Life #18, May 1980.

Long-running Russian/Soviet magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi ("Technology for the Youth") has plenty of cool future trains, like this battered 1970 cover by artist N. Aksyonov.

Much as magazines loved hyping up a future of amazing public transport, advertisers loved deploying cool trains in promotional materials. This one's Japanese JAL airlines promotional art for high-speed trains, from the late 1970s, according to Retro Sci-Fi Art.

One of my favorite train illustrations is called "Supersonic Vacuum Train," by Peter Goodfellow. It's available as a postcard from the British Library, but it must have been used as an illustration before then – I just wasn't able to track it down with a quick search.

The great Peter Elson did this 1998 bullet train illustration for a Doctor Who novel, Tempest, by Christopher Bulis.

That's about it for futuristic trains, but we'll have even more outlandish trains next time with part two – all about the old-timey steam locomotives that turn up in surreal, fantastical, and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Next Time: Trains of the Past