Ravilious had planned to publish a book illustrating the chalk figures of the South Coast, but this project never came to fruition when his life was cut cruelly short during service as an Official War Artist. However, he made several watercolours of chalk figures and spent a day travelling up and down the Eastbourne to Lewes line, painting the interior of the railway carriage with the landsape figures viewed through the window.

Conservation of 'Train Landscape' uncovered an entirely different landscape featuring the Wilmington Giant and collage overlays on the seat upholstery, previously a brown stripe fabric. His wife Tirzah Garwood, also a talented artist, wrote that Ravilious had made two train landscape watercolours that he was dissatisfied with and that she had cut and pasted the best parts of both, to make a whole new composition - Train Landscape, with the Westbury Horse in the background.