Vintage Railway Posters (UK)

My U.K. home town newspaper "The Bristol Post" (formerly "The Bristol Evening Post")  carried a story the other day about "Vintage Railway Posters"  i.e. the posters which railway companies used to encourage holiday-makers to travel by train.

The "Bristol Post"  had a link to a site where such posters could be purchased. That U. K. site offered the posters at cost of about 10 pounds (approx. $15) - which leads me to believe that they are reproductions (not originals).

Nevertheless the posters are charming.  I would guess that they date to the 1950's.

Here are my favourites:

Clifton Suspension Bridge  GWR and LMS

Bristol Cathedral, where I was made Deacon in 1976  GWR



Bristol's old Dockland (British Railways).

The LMS and the GWR were two of the four private Railway Companies which emerged from a (government mandated) rationalization of a host of private U.K. railways (in about 1922.

 

 

Bristol was served by:  the LMS (the minor company) (whose tracks ran at the end of  our back garden) (From Birmingham, to Bristol and to Bath).

 

and by the GWR (the major company) (with important services  to London, Bath, Taunton, Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance, as well as to South Wales, and to Birmingham - with subsequent connections to the midlands and to the north of England).

 

 

In 1947 all the U.K. railways were nationalised  by a  reforming U.K. Government led by the splendid Labour Party leader Clement Atlee.

 

 

The LMS became the "Midland Region" of the newly created "British  Railways", and the GWR became the "Western Region".

 

In more recent years the railway routes in the U.K. have been "un-nationalized" and returned to the private sector