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The Railway Poster in Britain

Early railway posters & the development of the pictorial poster

The earliest advertisements by the railways were simple, giving factual information about the services offered. These letter-press hand bills and notices were similar to those which had been used by the stage-coaches. A simple statementof the services the railways offered was enough to show that they were preferable and often quicker and cheaper. These early posters were produced using standard printers' blocks and included no individual graphic design.

The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway poster

The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway
Carlisle Races 1846
© National Railway Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

By the 1850's  rivalry between the large number of competing private railway companies and improvements in printing technology resulted in a greater use of advertising to promote their new, cheaper and more convenient services. Some of the posters produced as a result began to incorporate pictorial designs. Probably the earliest example of this is that produced by the London and Dover Railway around 1845, one of which survives in the collections of the National Railway Museum. It is probably the first British railway poster to incorporate realistic railway scenes in several colours.

London and Dover Railway Steamers to France poster

The London & Dover Railway
Fast Trains with Rapid Steamers to France 1845
© National Railway Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

The use of advertising was further increased by the development of special excursion trains that were additional to time-tabled services. These trains were for transporting people to specific events. They were arranged by the railway companies or by new independent travel operators like Thomas Cook, who organised his first railway excursion in 1841.

Although these developments in travel stimulated greater advertising, it was not until the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century that real developments in poster graphic design took place. Early coloured posters were still predominantly about conveying factual information rather than images, and were often poorly composed and garish.

The use of graphic artists for the design of railway advertising was a major influence in the development of the pictorial poster. In 1905 the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) took the lead in commissioning Norman Wilkinson to produce artwork for a new type of poster which incorporated landscape painting. Other companies followed suit with varying results.

London and North Western Railway To Ireland poster

London and North Western Railway
To Ireland by Norman Wilkinson, 1905
© National Railway Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

Someof the finest poster artists of the day were employed to portray the delightsand temptations that lay just a train ride away. The best set new standardsfor advertising art. The Great Northern Railway produced some of the postersthat combined image and text most successfully. 'Skegnessis So Bracing' by John Hassall, which first appeared in 1908 andfeatured the figure of the 'Jolly Fisherman' skipping along the beach becameperhaps the most famous of this genre.

Thepictorial railway poster soon developed into a familiar feature on stationsas the railway companies enticed passengers with a variety of colourfuland evocative images.