Railway Posters, 1923-1947
Reviewed by Jim Sweeney
When the government forced most British railroads to merge into four regional companies after World War I, it provided opportunities for the new companies to modernize their advertising and promotion.
With varying results, the four companies (Great Western, Southern, London Midland & Scottish, London & North Eastern) embraced modern poster design. The results are documented, with 200 posters, in Beverly Cole and Richard Durack's Railway Posters, 1923-1947 (Laurence King Publishers). The authors work for the National Railway Museum in York, England.
This book is a well-chosen look at the golden age of British railroad posters, a period probably little known to most Americans.
The authors note that trains rarely appeared in railroad posters before this period, being considered unaesthetic. But a watershed seems to have been reached with French artist A. M. Cassandre's 1927 "Nord Express," a poster for a transcontinental train involving several railroads, including Southern Railway.
Within two years, Southern had commissioned Edmond Vaughn's poster "South for Winter Sunshine," featuring diagonal lettering and a speeding train. Vaughn took a similar approach in "So Swiftly Home" (1932), showing a passenger train flashing by in the night. One of the most graphically striking images is H. Molenaar's rendition of Southern Railway's Bournemouth Belle Train, a head-on view of the locomotive in basic shapes and colors. Similarly abstract is P. Irwin Brown's 1930 poster for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway's centenary, an outline of a speeding locomotive.
Another interesting poster shows an Art Deco building, the Midland Hotel in Morecambe (1933) done by an unknown artist. The sunny rendition could pass for a Miami Beach scene.
There's a fascination with structures and technology, such as H. G. Gawthorn's dramatic scene of a train crossing the massive Forth Bridge in Scotland at dusk.
This article originally appeared in Trans-Lux volume 10, number 3, October 1992.
Where to Find the Book
You can find Railway Posters, 1923-1947 in local bookstores or purchase it on-line at a discount from Amazon.com Books.
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Comments
Created Thursday, August 03, 2000; Modified Thursday, September 18, 2003.
