Railway Posters 1948 - 1965

[Titfield]

Where did the familiar railway posters of the 1948 - 1965 period appear?
Were they just displayed at railway stations (or on hoardings alongside BR property) or did they appear elsewhere (ie on non railway owned property).?
TIA

 

[WesternLancer]

Where did the familiar railway posters of the 1948 - 1965 period appear?
Were they just displayed at railway stations (or on hoardings alongside BR property) or did they appear elsewhere (ie on non railway owned property).?
TIA

Good question. I can imagine they may also have been supplied to high street travel agents that sold rail tickets in the era for use as publicity material.

I wonder if local advertising managers had budgets to spend to buy hoarding space at commercial poster sites off the railway estate?

Unless you have that you are simply talking to existing passengers trying to persuade them to go to different places, rather than trying to win new business. I suspect prior to the mid 1950s and the start of the rise in car ownership, a majority of people who had to travel did so by train due to lack of any alternative, thus persuading them to travel more many have been the key objective?

 

[UrieS15]

Thinking about the long line of framed posters in the corridor at the Spa Pavilion at Whitby and the original artwork in the Pannet Art Galley these adverts begin in NER days and seem to have originated here. I suspect they were joint venture between the towns and the carriers and so the town publicity departments would have a share in the distribution of posters to their own 'customers' outside the reach of the railway sites.

 

[Titfield]

Many of the BR posters advertising resorts from the 1950s say write to...... for a guide and it gives the address of the towns publicity department.

 

[StephenHunter]

Did people actually do that or was it more a travel agent thing?

 

[30907]

Did people actually do that or was it more a travel agent thing?

My dad would write off for a guide, because that was the only place you could find all a town's hotels, guest houses, B and Bs etc. Though (OT) I also recall a copy or two of "Holiday Haunts" (IIRC that was a co-production too).

 

[Dr Hoo]

Did people actually do that or was it more a travel agent thing?

Oh yes. In the days before the internet and when most domestic properties didn't even have a telephone how were prospective visitors supposed to secure accommodation?

In many households there would be a family conference after Boxing Day lunch when the question 'where shall we go on holiday this year?' was posed. There would be a short list produced and then dad or mum would write letters to the local tourist offices/Town Halls or whatever asking for a guide (sometimes even enclosing a stamped, addressed large envelope if requested). These guides arrived without fail by return of post on 28 December (subject to Sunday intervening).

Dad or mum would then write postcards or letters to B&Bs or guest houses that appealed asking if they had a vacancy for X persons in Y week. If feeling flush one might go out and queue a the local phone box with a large pile of loose change and then phone the Operator to request a trunk call to places in Anytown-on-Sea in order to shorten the process. (But that meant no beer or fag money that week, of course.)

Different world 'back in the day'!

 

[Killingworth]

Did people actually do that or was it more a travel agent thing?

A bygone age! There were ads for resorts and hotels in national daily and weekend newspapers, Bradshaw railway guides (timetables), as well as AA and RAC handbooks. Folks wrote off for the resort guides and the railway posters were all part of that campaign. Some locations displayed French and other continental posters. (I wrote to hotels in the south of France to collect the stamps on the replies!)

 

[StephenHunter]

I've seen the hotel adverts in old Cook's timetables; where hot water in your room was something the hotels used as a selling point!

 

[Titfield]

It was a huge business with towns like Bournemouth receiving requests for tens of thousands of guide books.

 

[Killingworth]

I've seen the hotel adverts in old Cook's timetables; where hot water in your room was something the hotels used as a selling point!

In 1962 and 1963 we holidayed in Scotland where all we got in a 2 star hotel was a big jug of cold water, a basin and a walk down the corridor for the toilet. It can't have been too bad because we went the two years running. Even when running water was plumbed in it was rarely very hot - a fault we found in a big 4 star Scottish hotel last week!

 

[John Webb]

A very useful short history of railway posters can be found in the Shire publication "Railway Posters" by Lorna Frost, published in 2012 (ISBN 978-0-74781-084-1). The NRM in York has also published various books looking at posters in their collection.

 

[WesternLancer]

Did people actually do that or was it more a travel agent thing?

As an aside of note 2 or 3 years ago we went on a Norway cruise. My other half had the idea to contact the tourist offices in the towns/ports of call to get some info on what there might be to do / how to get about etc. I'm sure the contact was by e-mail, not letter. However, all sorts of useful brochures and info turned up in the post from the towns concerned within a week or two. So in a way, people can still do it!

 

[ian1944]

In the 50/60s my family shortcut the process, not writing off for guides to individual towns as the local library had a copy of a lot of them.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Where did the familiar railway posters of the 1948 - 1965 period appear?
Were they just displayed at railway stations (or on hoardings alongside BR property) or did they appear elsewhere (ie on non railway owned property).?
TIA

Getting back to the OP's question, it is worth noting that 'railway' posters were generally differently sized to 'ordinary' posters. So they needed special boards. Railway posters were 'double royal' in portrait layout although double-width 'quad royal' could be used in certain cases. (The London Underground map being a classic case in point.) Thus railway posters were usually only displayed on railway property. This principally meant stations although locations such as boundary walls and bridge abutments were sometimes equipped with boards although some local authorities probably discouraged this on aesthetic grounds.

Commercial posters were generally produced in multiples of 'crown' sizes. Hence the fact that British Transport Advertising (BTA) boards at stations were a different size. Woe betide any over-enthusiastic porter who enterprisingly put a railway poster on an unused BTA board!

In some cases there were arrangements for 'off site' railway poster boards. In the many cases where the station was nowhere near the town/village centre the local authority might agree to a timetable poster being displayed as a public service. Obviously these boards couldn't be used for 'promotional' posters.

Particularly where rail and bus services had historically been in common ownership there could be 'reciprocal arrangements'. These allowed some railway posters to be displayed at bus stations or on the exterior walls of bus depots, whilst bus posters could be displayed at the local railway station. Obviously these could be something of a mixed blessing. It would be common for people who had trudged to the poorly-located railway station to catch one of the irregular, infrequent, indirect, sooty trains to while away their wait looking at a poster listing regular, more frequent, handier, more direct services in a nice modern bus at lower fares. These people soon became the well over 90% of non-metropolitan public transport users who used bus rather than rail by the time that Dr Beeching came along.

 

[WesternLancer]

Getting back to the OP's question, it is worth noting that 'railway' posters were generally differently sized to 'ordinary' posters. So they needed special boards. Railway posters were 'double royal' in portrait layout although double-width 'quad royal' could be used in certain cases. (The London Underground map being a classic case in point.) Thus railway posters were usually only displayed on railway property. This principally meant stations although locations such as boundary walls and bridge abutments were sometimes equipped with boards although some local authorities probably discouraged this on aesthetic grounds.

Commercial posters were generally produced in multiples of 'crown' sizes. Hence the fact that British Transport Advertising (BTA) boards at stations were a different size. Woe betide any over-enthusiastic porter who enterprisingly put a railway poster on an unused BTA board!

In some cases there were arrangements for 'off site' railway poster boards. In the many cases where the station was nowhere near the town/village centre the local authority might agree to a timetable poster being displayed as a public service. Obviously these boards couldn't be used for 'promotional' posters.

Particularly where rail and bus services had historically been in common ownership there could be 'reciprocal arrangements'. These allowed some railway posters to be displayed at bus stations or on the exterior walls of bus depots, whilst bus posters could be displayed at the local railway station. Obviously these could be something of a mixed blessing. It would be common for people who had trudged to the poorly-located railway station to catch one of the irregular, infrequent, indirect, sooty trains to while away their wait looking at a poster listing regular, more frequent, handier, more direct services in a nice modern bus at lower fares. These people soon became the well over 90% of non-metropolitan public transport users who used bus rather than rail by the time that Dr Beeching came along.

Interesting point about poster sizes being a key factor. Never knew that.

 

[tbwbear]

The other thing that always strikes me is that a lot of the 1950s and early 1960s posters advertised the destination rather than the mode. Rail is almost an afterthought.

So, it is more of a big splash - "Come to Bournemouth" - and a much smaller "go by rail" and the BR hotdog logo. You could imagine them working on people and persuading them to visit the destination in the advertisement but going by car instead.

I think there were a few posters from that period that showed traffic jams viewed from train windows etc.., but most were advertising destination not mode of travel.

That finally changed with the shift in the mid 60s to more of a concentration on advertsing rail's benefits - intercity makes the going easy etc....

 

[WesternLancer]

The other thing that always strikes me is that a lot of the 1950s and early 1960s posters advertised the destination rather than the mode. Rail is almost an afterthought.

So, it is more of a big splash - "Come to Bournemouth" - and a much smaller "go by rail" and the BR hotdog logo. You could imagine them working on people and persuading them to visit the destination advertisement but going by car instead.

I think there were a few posters from that period that showed traffic jams viewed from train windows etc.., but most were advertising destination not mode of travel.

That finally changed with the shift in the mid 60s to more of a concentration on advertsing rail's benefits - intercity makes the going easy etc....

Yes. not the easiest graph to read but households without a car :
1950 - c85%
1960 - c70%
1970 - c50%

from

10 charts that tell the story of Britain's roads

The majority of journeys in Britain are made by car.

www.bbc.co.uk

so at the start of the period for sure vast majority of households would have no great alternative other than to use the train, just a question of encouraging them to go.

Of course those who were more affluent would have more holiday choices, and also more likely to have a family car.

 

[Ashley Hill]

There is a regional series of books called Poster to Poster a Journey by Art by Richard Furness. These give a fascinating history of railway posters and some of the artists. The books themselves are now highly collectable.