The Railway Poster in Britainjrtr.net/jrtr17/pdf/f21_pos.pdf · The Railway Poster in Britain ......

21Japan Railway & Transport Review 17 • September 1998

Railways and Tourism (part 2)

Copyright © 1998 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

Features

The Railway Poster in Britain

Dieter W. Hopkin and Beverley Cole

The National Railway Museum

The National Railway Museum (NRM) inYork is part of the National Museum ofScience and Industry of Britain. It wasopened in 1975 and is probably the big-gest museum of its type in the world. Itscollections are the largest, the most com-prehensive, and the most significant intheir field anywhere in the world and in-clude 100 locomotives, nearly 200 car-riages and wagons and artefacts of everydescription from uniforms to signallingequipment.The Museum’s Pictorial Collections con-tain original works of art, paintings, draw-ings, engravings and other printedmaterial covering more than 150 years ofrailway history in Britain. Perhaps thestrongest collection is that of railway post-ers. The collection of over 7000 posterscovers the whole history of railway ad-vertising from the earliest simple hand-bills to today’s sophisticated examples.This article includes a selection of the

Museum’s extensive collection (see pp.25–28). The story of railways in Britainhas been reflected in the development ofthe railway poster. This art form illustratesthe major changes that have occurred inBritish society over the years and capturesthe spirit and character of British life overthat period. Railway posters also providehistorical information about the geo-graphical growth of the network and aboutthe people for whom they were designed.As such, they are material evidence of Brit-ish culture and are social documents.They illustrate styles in art, the changingpatterns of holiday-making, urban andrural landscapes, architecture, fashion, thedevelopment of advertising standards, andthe approaches and aspirations of com-panies.

Early Railway Posters

The earliest advertisements of the railwayswere simple, giving factual informationabout the services offered. These hand-

bills and notices were similar to those thathad been used by the stagecoaches. Asimple statement of the services the rail-ways offered was enough to show thatthey were preferable and often quickerand cheaper. These letterpress posterswere produced using standard printingblocks and included no individual graphicdesign. When illustrative elements wereintroduced, they were generally standardpatterns depicting generic locomotivesand carriages that were combined to formtrains.By the 1850s, rivalry between the largenumber of competing private railwaycompanies resulted in a greater use ofadvertising to promote alternative ser-vices. Another development was the op-eration of special or excursion trainsadditional to the timetabled services toprovide transport to specific events. Thesewere either arranged by the railway com-panies or independent travel operatorslike Thomas Cook, who organized his firstrailway excursion in 1841.The first mass advertising of this sort arose

The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway was one of thefirst railways to advertise its services for popular travel.This particularly early letterpress poster of 1846promotes cheap fares to travel to a popular sportingevent in Carlisle in the north west of England.

(National Railway Museum/Science & Society Picture Library, U.K.)

The artist Norman Wilkinson working on the artwork for his poster ‘Garston, a Merseyside Port’ 1924.(National Railway Museum, U.K.)

Copyright National Railway Museum, UK

The original colour of the posters on this page has been changed for copyright reasons.

Copyright National RailwayMuseum, UK

22 Japan Railway & Transport Review 17 • September 1998



from the Great Exhibition in London in1851. During the 6 months of the Exhibi-tion, it attracted over 6 million visitors,many of whom arrived in London by trainsoperated by many competing companies.During the 1850s and 1860s, commercialrivalry on a number of principal routeslead to an increase in railway advertis-ing. New, cheaper and more convenientservices were promoted. In this climate,more creative posters began to be pro-duced incorporating pictorial designs.Probably the earliest example is a rareposter produced by the London & DoverRailway around 1845; only one exampleis known to survive and it is in the collec-tions of the NRM. It is probably the firstBritish railway poster that incorporatesrealistic railway scenes and severalcolours.

Development ofPictorial Posters

It was not until the 1870s that the real ad-vances in pictorial posters took place.Early coloured posters still predominantlyconveyed factual information rather thanimages. They were often poorly com-posed, garish and typographically coarse.However, they did lay the foundations forthe more creative illustrative posters thatwere to follow.Britain’s railways did not really make gooduse of artists for their advertising until thebeginning of the twentieth century. In1905, the London & North Western Rail-way took the lead in commissioningNorman Wilkinson to produce artwork fora new type of poster that incorporatedlandscape paintings. The other compa-nies followed this example with varyingsuccess. The pictorial railway poster soondeveloped into a familiar feature of rail-way stations as the companies tried toentice passengers with an almost endlessvariety of colourful and evocative images.Some of the finest poster artists of the daywere employed to portray the delights and

temptations that lay just a train ride away.The best set new standards for advertis-ing art, while others remained a clutter oftext and images. Some posters that com-bined image and text most successfullywere produced by the Great NorthernRailway. Skegness is So Bracing by JohnHassall, which first appeared in 1908 andfeatured the figure of the Jolly Fishermanskipping along the beach, was the mostfamous, but there were many others andseveral of the introduced subjects andthemes were developed over the years.

Holiday travelAbove all, it was holiday travel that therailway poster came to be associatedwith—a world of sunshine, sandy beachesand endless fun. Growing prosperity ledto increased demand for travel. However,some companies had not always beenkeen to cater for holiday traffic, but itgradually came to be seen as an impor-tant source of revenue. Before the First

World War, the railway companies werefortunate in having few competitors forthis traffic. The train was quite simply thebest and often the only way to travel.The rapid growth of seaside resorts owedmuch to the expansion of the railway net-work. Sea bathing increased in popular-ity during the nineteenth century andrailways were able to provide fast accessfrom the towns and cities for many morepeople who had the luxury of leisure timeand paid and public holidays. The rail-ways opened up parts of the countrywhich had been previously inaccessible.New resorts sprung up on Britain’s coasts.However, the new visitors that the rail-ways brought were not always welcomedwith open arms. At Bridlington, in York-shire, day visitors were disliked by regu-lar visitors and residents alike and thestation was sited well away from the sea.Most of the larger resorts came to caterfor all classes of visitor but others tried toretain a more select clientele.

Railway publicity stands on a show ground in 1909 advertising the services of the London & North Western,Lancashire & Yorkshire, Furness, North Staffordshire, South Eastern & Chatham, Great Western, Midland andGreat Central railways. (National Railway Museum, U.K.)



23Japan Railway & Transport Review 17 • September 1998Copyright © 1998 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

In some cases, railways created resortswhere little had existed before. In 1871,Skegness in Lincolnshire had a popula-tion of less than 500. A railway line wasopened to the town 2 years later and alarge station was built with the hope ofattracting holiday traffic to the sandybeaches. The crowds came and the fa-cilities grew. By 1907, Skegness was at-tracting 300,000 visitors a year, mostlyfrom the industrial towns of the East Mid-lands and Yorkshire.

The Golden Age ofthe Railway Poster

In 1923, the railway companies were re-organized by the government. The exist-ing 123 private railways were formed intofour new companies, known collectivelyas The Big Four. These were the London,Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), theLondon and North Eastern Railway(LNER), the Great Western Railway (GWR)and the Southern Railway (SR). The newarrangements, with four large regional

companies, brought a greater degree ofunity to the network and made life easierfor the traveller, but the four companieswere very different in size and character.The new companies were keen to developstrong corporate images and during the1920s and 1930s created distinctive in-house styles that were applied to every-thing associated with the company fromlocomotives to leaflets. This had a clearimpact on advertising and especially post-ers. The LNER was a leader in graphicdesign with its use of good artists for itsposter illustrations and the developmentof its distinctive Gill sans serif graphics,named after Eric Gill.Strong themes emerged that became fa-miliar to the railway traveller; the South-ern Railway promoted the South forsunshine either to the English south-coastresorts or Continental Europe and empha-sized its modern electric trains with fre-quent use of the electric flash or sparkmotif. The LNER promoted the East Coastresorts as The Drier Side of Britain and itsprestige express trains. The GWR’s key-

note was Speed to the West while the LMSpromoted images reflecting the size of thecompany and the breadth of its opera-tions. The companies also made use ofthe history of their operations and theheritage of their operational areas to pro-mote their images.

House styles of The Big FourAll developed their own styles using par-ticular artists and approaches. Each com-pany also had its own distinct brandingto depict its title or initials. The GWRbutton logo or the LNER ellipse are clearexamples of this. Because of their needto have popular appeal they reflected thefashion and style of the period. Art deco,abstract, as well as more conventionalrepresentational styles, were used. Theposters also reflected more general artis-tic influences from Europe and the FarEast.This period has been referred to as theGolden Age of the railway poster. Artistssuch as Cassandre, Edward McKnightKauffer, Fred Taylor, and Tom Purvis pro-duced extremely fine work during thistime and railway advertising providessome of the best examples of contempo-rary commercial art. During this period,graphic or commercial artists became ac-knowledged and recognized as a legiti-mate field of artistic endeavour. A generalawareness that commercial design neededto be taught in art schools alongside fineart was becoming more accepted.However, this flourishing of commercialart was not achieved in a vacuum and thedevelopment of the railway poster duringthe 1920s and 1930s was a gradual andsometimes difficult process.

Great Western RailwayThe GWR was the only company thatexisted before the advent of The Big Fourin 1923. It had never been noted for thequality of its posters and the first efforts ofthe enlarged GWR were hardly inspiring.Unlike the other companies, it did not

LMS posters advertising the company’s services associated with the 1927 exhibition of the Royal Scot, a newlocomotive. The posters include Norman Wilkinson’s Building an Engine, advertisements for Christmas and NewYear excursions, the resort of Colwyn Bay, and golfing holidays. (National Railway Museum, U.K.)






suffer a major upheaval in 1923. It con-tinued much as before and this appliedas much to publicity as to its other areasof activity. Its strengths carried over, butso did its weaknesses. In posters, theweaknesses included over-reliance onprinting firms and the frequent concernfor economy, resulting in designs of poorquality.Improvements came and in 1933, a se-ries of six posters of Devon and Cornwallwas commissioned from the Americandesigner Edward McKnight Kauffer. Hewas highly regarded by the new schoolof poster artists and by the critics. Hisposters of Devon and Cornwall causedmuch comment but were not toeveryone’s taste. Further innovation fol-lowed in 1936 with the appearance of aseries of posters by Ronald Lampitt in anunusual mosaic style.

Southern RailwayLife was not so easy for the Southern Rail-way. Relations between its three constitu-ent companies had never been good andit took some time to establish a degree ofunity.The first advertisement in a newspapercampaign appeared under the heading‘The Truth about the Southern’ and re-viewed the role and achievements of itsconstituent companies during the FirstWorld War. Details of suburban electrifi-cation and the building of new steam lo-comotives shared space with accounts ofhow carriages were cleaned and the diffi-culties of dealing with rush-hour traffic.John Elliot, SR’s advertising manager, sawimprovement of press relations as equallyimportant. He opened an InformationSection at Waterloo, London that report-ers were free to visit and provided regulararticles and information. He paid particu-lar attention to suburban and eveningnewspapers as these had been responsiblefor much criticism of the railway. The newapproach to press relations was extremelysuccessful.

Many stations were rebuilt and modern-ized, and as both services and facilitiesimproved, the number of passengers in-creased. London was easier to reach andit became possible to live well away fromthe city yet still commute comfortably.Much advertising was aimed at the com-muter but the SR was also keen to pro-mote off-peak travel by shoppers andtheatregoers. The SR image was trans-formed during these years. The slogan‘Southern Electric’, coupled with the dis-tinctive electric flash motif, was used onstations, bridges and posters to advertisethe new network.This new image did not mean that the tra-ditional area of holiday publicity was ne-glected and the SR developed its own stylein advertising resorts both at home andabroad. Much of its output was brash andunsophisticated, but highly effective. The‘Southern Coast’ was promoted as the sun-shine coast and colourful characters wereused to reinforce this theme.

London, Midland and ScottishThe LMS was a very different railway fromthe SR but it too got off to a difficult start.Not only were there tensions betweenseveral of the constituent companies, butthere were also problems in bringing to-gether such a vast and diverse system. Ithad inherited some good practices fromconstituent companies like the LNWR thathad employed Norman Wilkinson, but itsearly products were simply the results ofcarrying on the policies of the earlier com-panies.However, the LMS soon developed a newpolicy for poster advertising. It commis-sioned three posters from the artistNorman Wilkinson and asked for hisviews on how its advertising could beimproved. Wilkinson proposed that toraise standards, members of the RoyalAcademy should be asked to design a se-ries of posters for the company. Eighteenartists were approached by Wilkinson andall, with the exception of Frank Brangwyn

LMS posters by Norman Wilkinson and Paul Henry in 1927, advertising holidays in Ireland. The LMS ran ferriesand connecting boat trains to Ireland. (National Railway Museum, U.K.)




Blackpool on England’s north west coast owed much of its development in thenineteenth century and subsequent popularity to the railways. It was andremains a very popular resort. In this poster from the early 1920s, the artistWilton Williams illustrates some of the fashionable women who might beamong Blackpool’s other delights.

England and Scotland East Coast Route c. 1900. This flamboyant poster for theeastern route from London to Scotland shows the line and illustrates in cameos someof the sights along it, such as the Forth Bridge and the attractions of the towns andcities served.

London Brighton & South CoastRailway poster promotingexcursions from London toEnglish south coast resorts,1901. The railways played animportant part in developingtourist traffic which helped todevelop seaside resorts in thelate nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries.

The Jolly Fisherman depicted inthe poster Skegness Is SoBracing is arguably the mostfamous English holiday posterimage and was first produced in1908. This is artist JohnHassall’s 1926 version for theLondon and North EasternRailway.

A South Eastern & ChathamRailway poster promotingservices for the Crystal PalaceGrand International Show ofPoultry & Pigeons, 1921. Theunknown artist has colourfullydepicted some of the sorts offancy birds and fowls featuredin the show.

British Railway Posters







26 Japan Railway & Transport Review 17 • September 1998 Copyright © 1998 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

The Night Mail—The Enginemen, 1924. The artist William Orpen createdthis dramatic image of the fireman and driver of a speeding steamlocomotive for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. It is one of aseries of 16 commissioned by the LMS from members of the RoyalAcademy.

Try a Fly by V. L. Danvers. This 1925 poster isone of a series produced by the London andNorth Eastern Railway aimed at countrysportsmen. The style is simple and clear withtrout rising to an artificial fly. Its executionshows clear Japanese influences and reflectsthe fashion for Japanese art in Britain in the1920s.

Great Western to Devon’s Moors by EdwardMcKnight Kauffer, 1933. McKnight Kauffer’sdesigns were influenced by new European artmovements. This can be seen clearly herewith strong lines which emphasize theopenness of the countryside and the stunningviews.

Le Fleche D’Or—Golden Arrow. The GoldenArrow luxury train service ran between Londonand Paris from 1929. Much of the advertising ofcontinental services was carried out with othercompanies like Compagnie Internationale desWagons-Lits and Chemins de Fer du Nord usingexciting continental artists like W. S.Bagdadopoulos.

East Coast Joys—Sun Bathing. This is one ofsix posters in a 1931 series by Tom Purvisproduced for the London & North EasternRailway which form a continuous scene whenplaced next to each other, but each poster isso designed that it can stand alone. This is awonderful example of Tom Purvis’s style withflat primary colours and the elimination ofdetail conveying the pleasures of the seasidein the 1930s.

100 Years of Progress, 1835–1935 by Murray Secretan. The GreatWestern Railway celebrated its centenary in 1935 and published this posteras part of the celebrations.

Copyright National Railway Museum, UKCopyright National Railway

Museum, UKCopyright National Railway

Museum, UK


Copyright National RailwayMuseum, UK Copyright National Railway Museum, UK



Waterloo Station—(War). This was one of two posters commissioned from Helen McKie as part of the celebrations to mark the 1948 centenaryof the opening of Waterloo Station. They contrast the differences in a wartime and post-war scene.

Have your Tickets Ready Please by ReginaldMayes c. 1945. This joint poster issued by theGWR, LMS, LNER, SR and London Transportshows thoughtless civilians delaying military staffon war service. The humorous cartooncharacters convey a serious message.

Speed To The West, 1939. This poster by Charles Mayo, who workedin the Publicity Department of the Great Western Railway, shows aKing-class locomotive, the most powerful express passengerlocomotives on the railway, hauling a holiday train to the English WestCountry.

Come to Cromer by Bruce Angrave, c. 1937. Inthis poster an attractive fashionable youngwoman in her bathing costume is used topromote the delights of this east coast seasideresort with its sandy beaches.





28 Japan Railway & Transport Review 17 • September 1998 Copyright © 1998 EJRCF. All rights reserved.

(All colour posters except Tain—by Train,courtesy of National Railway Museum/Science & Society Picture Library, U.K.)

Weston Super-Mare in Somerset was a WestCountry resort the development of which owedmuch to the railways. In this early 1950sposter by Mr Merville, the delights of the Iido oropen air swimming pool are promoted.

Lance Cattermole’s poster from the 1960spromotes Scottish folk culture as an attractionto visitors and features sword dancingaccompanied by music played on the bagpipes.Highland Games are held annually in variousparts of Scotland.

Racing off Ryde by Claude Buckle, 1957. Ryde is on the Isle of Wightwhich is 3 miles from the south coast of Britain. It is a popular holidaylocation especially for leisure sailors.

This poster, by Bagley, was issued in 1962 tocommemorate the centenary of the famous FlyingScotsman express train between London andEdinburgh. The poster is dominated by one of thepowerful diesel electric Deltic-class locomotives whichwere introduced in 1961.

Tain—By Train by Brendan Neiland, 1996. One of aseries of six posters commissioned by Scot Rail toadvertise the Scottish Highland line. The image is of awhisky still for brewing Scotch whisky, one ofScotland’s most famous products. (Brendan Neiland)

In 1976, British Rail introduced a new generation ofhigh-speed diesel trains which reduced journey timeson most of inter-city routes. They were promoted asthe Inter-City125 trains because their maximumoperating speed was 125 mph. The advertisers madeconsiderable use of the sleek appearance of thesetrains which was emphasised by the design treatmentof their external paintwork including the distinctivedouble arrow logo.








who was working for the LNER, accepted.The subjects were chosen and allocatedby Wilkinson but the artists were then leftto carry out the design in their own way.The first of these posters appeared earlyin 1924. They were intended to illustratethe life and work of the LMS as well asthe scenic areas it served. Three postersdepicted industries served by the LMS.This was new ground for the railwayposter. In the past, the railway compa-nies had advertised docks and other fa-cilities that they offered to industry, butthey had not shown the industries them-selves. The scheme generated an enor-mous amount of publicity for the LMS and,as Wilkinson had predicted, opinion waslargely favourable.

London and North Eastern RailwayIn the LNER, relations between the con-stituent companies were generally ami-cable and the new company soon got into

its stride.Its first poster in March 1923, featured aview by Fred Taylor of the interior of YorkMinster. It was much admired. Over thenext few months a stream of colourfulimages appeared on the hoardings as thenew advertising campaign got under way.The designs Taylor commissionedstretched to all corners of the system. Slo-gans were used by the LNER to provide aconstant reminder to passengers about itsmajor routes: King’s Cross for Scotland andHarwich for the Continent were to appearfrequently on posters and other publicitymaterials.Some of the best advertising of these yearswas used to promote trains and services.Many of the companies had stressed thespeed and comfort of their trains, particu-larly those that operated the lines betweenLondon and Scotland. This rivalry waspursued by the LMS and LNER duringthe 1920s and 1930s. In 1935, the LNER

introduced its first streamlined train, theSilver Jubilee, which ran between Londonand Newcastle. This was followed twoyears later by the Coronation which cov-ered the distance between London andEdinburgh in only 6 hours.

Wartime Posters

The outbreak of the Second World Warin September 1939 saw the hoardingscleared of most advertising. In wartime,the emphasis shifted away from leisureand holiday travel. The coastal holidayresorts effectively closed because of thethreat of invasion and the railway indus-try took on its essential role as part of thewar machine moving men and material.Station names were painted out to con-fuse the enemy in the event of invasionand there was a universal black out atnight, masking all lighting that might

An LMS staff member at Hatch End Station in 1938 pasting up a poster advertising specialexcursions from London to stations in Lancashire. (National Railway Museum, U.K.)

The artist Tom Purvis in front of his poster ‘Bracing East Anglia—TravelLNER’ circa 1932. (National Railway Museum, U.K.)

29


Copyright National Railway Museum, UK Copyright National Railway Museum, UK




attract raiding bombers.Space was created on the poster hoard-ings for notices issued by the newly-formed Railway Executive Committee,which was responsible for running thenetwork, and for giving information onurgent matters, including emergency time-tables, air-raid warnings and reduced ser-vices. The Big Four companies wereunited for operations under the name Brit-ish Railways.By November 1939, the British Railwaysnetwork was taking the war effort seri-ously. They were moving extra food sup-plies, equipment and troops. This wascarried out under strict conditions ofsecrecy to destinations that were guardedday and night by armed sentries.The emphasis was on running the railwayefficiently and doing a tough job indifficult conditions. Although manyrailwaymen were excluded from militaryservice because railway work was seenas an essential part of the war effort, manyjoined up and their jobs were filled bywomen recruits. The public was asked torecognize the importance of the railwaysto the war effort; railways were AnotherMechanised Army as depicted in one1940 poster. People were asked to con-sider what was really important withquestions like ‘Is your journey really nec-essary?’ and ‘Food, Shells and Fuel mustcome first. Do you mind?’They were also asked to play their part inkeeping the railways running smoothly bytravelling only when necessary, and wereurged to help the hard-pressed railwayworkers. Some of the Railway Executive’sbest war posters employed a humorouscartoon style to get their message acrosswith slogans such as ‘Have your ticketsready please’ and ‘Heavy parcels causedelay’ and ‘There isn’t even half an en-gine to spare for unnecessary journeys’.As the threat of invasion faded and theend to the war came in sight, the war post-ers began to come down and station namesigns were restored. Optimism abounded

and the advertising boards reverted to TheBig Four.In May 1945, a joint poster by The BigFour was designed by R. Mayes to markVictory in Europe (V-E) day with the cap-tion In War and Peace We Serve. Otherpost-war posters reflected on the railway’swartime contribution like Helen McKie’sWaterloo pair for the SR.

Post-war Optimism

In the optimism of the post-war period thepublic were no longer prepared to put upwith the restrictions of wartime services.The railways began to return to normal.Poster advertising again promoted thedelights of holidays at home with an em-phasis on a return to pre-war standards.Posters published by the GWR during thisperiod included views of London and Ply-mouth with none of the destruction thatthe two cities had suffered. Instead, post-ers recaptured much of the fun of earlieryears, and passengers again found it diffi-cult to resist the lure of coast and coun-tryside.

Posters ofNationalized Industry

The Labour government elected in 1945had a clear agenda to nationalize manyof the principal industries of the nation.This included the railways and most othermajor transport operations which becamepart of the state-owned British TransportCommission on 1 January 1948. Publicownership brought optimism and hope tomany, but brought about little initialchange on the railways which continuedvery much as before. Unfortunately, dueto the wear and tear of the war years therailways were at a low ebb. Some 6000stations were in urgent need of repair orreconstruction and permanent-way main-tenance work was in arrears to the extentof nearly 10 million sleepers. The rolling

stock position was even more serious.The splendour and artistic merit charac-terizing the railway poster of the GoldenAge were left behind in favour of basicexplanations of the problems facing Brit-ish Railways. These were often treatedwith the usual British humour. Also, notonly were paper and printing ink in shortsupply after the war but the printingpresses were outdated and in need of re-pair or renewal, so design simplicity wasthe best option.The nationalized British Railways, al-though unified in many ways, operatedlike its predecessor private companies.The new British Railways (BR) regionswere similar to those operated by The BigFour and many of their practices contin-ued for the first years after nationalization.Posters had a very similar look althoughthey now carried the British Railwaysname in a distinctive lozenge or totemdesign. Advertising was on a regionalbasis and only in the 1960s did a distinc-tive new image develop.In the interim, the familiar re-emerged.The public was bombarded with andtempted by idyllic scenes of well-fed,happy families in beautiful Britain, enjoy-ing picture-book weather on golden sandsand British holiday fun. However, thestyle and designs changed to suit thechanges in society that had taken place.Images of healthy families at play wereused to promote resorts and rail travel. Wesee the upright, dependable and solid fa-ther figure, the well-proportioned, whole-some (often blonde) mother, accompaniedby a couple of beaming, well-behavedand radiant children enjoying the perfectholiday. Also, the use of the female fig-ure was shamelessly used to induce—ormaybe seduce—the traveller to visit re-sorts from Bognor to Bridlington. Therewas some innovative work that can beseen in work by artists such as AbramGames.

30


British Railand Corporate Identity

The railways were now having to com-pete seriously with the car. Postersshowed the frustration experienced bymotorists in traffic jams. In 1958, the firststages of railway modernization were pro-moted with posters showing electrifica-tion and new engineering works. In 1959,Progress by Terence Cuneo showed newdiesel locomotives being built.During the 1960s, British Railways under-went a radical re-shaping and re-focus-ing. The report The Reshaping of BritishRailways was published in 1963. It pre-sented a plan for a new, more efficient,modern and smaller railway. This resultedin the closure of many minor routes andthe emergence of the ‘new’ railway. Steamlocomotives were replaced by moderndiesel and electric locomotives and themessage of the changing railway was pro-jected through poster advertising. New,cleaner, faster trains were promoted andfeatured prominently in poster designs.As part of its new image, BR undertook aradical look at design across the wholecompany. It decided that it needed a newcorporate identity and in 1965 launcheda new corporate design. This was inno-vative and had impact outside Britainthrough the widespread adoption of suchelements as Jock Kinneir’s British Rail Al-phabet, which was designed for maximumlegibility.The whole railway was re-branded as Brit-ish Rail, with the distinctive double arrowlogo. Business sectors within the railwayalso received their own treatment withinthis overall corporate image. In 1966, themain-line express train services werebranded Inter-City and the freight opera-tion Railfreight. The results in poster ad-vertising were clearly visible with a greaterconsistency of style that was more tightlycontrolled centrally.The railway poster also had to appeal tochanging consumer taste. Instead of sta-

tion posters preaching to the converted,they were having to try to tempt back pas-sengers who were increasingly turning totheir cars as the preferred form of trans-port. Similarly, advertising media becamemore diverse. Television commercials,newspaper advertising and mailshots de-livered the message to the homes and of-fices of those who seldom used therailway. External advertising agencieswere used. Media personalities were usedto attract the traveller, such as rock starGary Glitter, disc jockey Jimmy Saville,and pop group Abba. These posters weretacky and brash, reflecting the times.Railway poster art was seemingly in de-cline.In the 1980s, posters were used to projectthe latest stage of modernization with theintroduction of new high-speed trains.The stylish new Inter-City 125 trains rein-forced Inter-City’s visual identity, and thetrain was known as ‘The journey shrinker’.These high-speed services were essentialto win back travellers from the roads andto increase revenue for BR which wasunder increasing financial pressure fromthe government. The operating sectors ofBR were now managed as separate busi-nesses preparing the way for further radi-

cal change. Identities became confused,which is reflected in advertising imagesregularly incorporating several differentlogos or design approaches.In 1993, the Conservative governmentpassed legislation to take the railways outof public ownership—to privatize them.From this process, which was completedin 1997, has emerged a whole series ofnew train operating companies, many ofwhich are new to the railway business.Yet again there are competing companieswith a desire to increase their marketshare. One possible product of thischange and increased competition maybe a revival of railway poster art. The newcompanies will no doubt draw on the richheritage of railway posters from the past,but they will hopefully combine thesewith an innovative new approach. What-ever happens, the NRM will continue todocument the ongoing story in its contin-ued collecting of railway posters. �

Beverley Cole

Ms Cole is the Curator of the Pictorial Collection at the National Railway Museum in York. Before this,

she was a curator at the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television at Bradford.

Dieter W. Hopkin

Mr Hopkin is Head of Library and Archive Collections at the National Railway Museum in York, where

he has worked since 1989. After graduating in History from the University of Leicester in 1981, he

obtained a Master’s degree in Museum Studies in 1988.

31

The Railway Poster in Britainjrtr.net/jrtr17/pdf/f21_pos.pdf · The Railway Poster in Britain ......

Documents

Transcript of The Railway Poster in Britainjrtr.net/jrtr17/pdf/f21_pos.pdf · The Railway Poster in Britain ......