The Royal Scot Euston to Glasgow and Edinburgh billboard poster, 1927.

[Litho*lover]

hello everyone,

new member - glad to be here.

I‘m a fairly avid collector and occasional seller of advertising posters of various kinds - travel, cinema, auto, propaganda and of course, railway. currently in my inventory I have a very large 8-sheet billboard poster (roughly 9 feet by 7 feet) and I was wondering whether anyone could perhaps tell me any more about it?

the piece was printed by Scallen and Company, formerly of Lisle St London and was originally printed in eight sheets, since combined onto cotton canvas/linen. Annoyingly, I can see now in my image an artists signature close to the foot of the front right wheel. I can dig the poster out of storage if anyone requires it?

lovely bit of Art Deco design, I think, and while I have seen the image before on pamphlets and associated memorabilia of the period I haven’t seen the poster itself elsewhere.

Hopefully you’ll find it of interest and thanks in advance for any further information you may be able to supply.

Phil.

 

[davetheguard]

Hi Litho*lover welcome to the forum.

Firstly, my knowledge of steam locomotives is pretty low; there will be people on here who know much more than me. The loco carries an London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) number, so the poster (or its depiction) is sure enough pre-nationalisation which happened in 1948.

Odd that the railway company name is not mentioned; and did the Royal Scot ever carry a portion to Edinburgh anyway? I wonder if this is an authentic poster; or possibly just an attractive piece of artwork? However, the fact that you have a specific date of 1927 for it, presumably makes the former more likely.

 

[Kingston Flyer]

The loco depicted is LMS 6100 'Royal Scot', which I believed to have been built at Crewe in the Early 20s, the first of a class of 6P locomotives.

I say believed, because having just double checked myself, she was in fact built 1927 (and by North British in Glasgow)

The 10am services from Glasgow Central to Euston and from Euston to Glasgow (a service that had been in existence since 1862), picked up the name name 'The Royal Scot' in 1927. Having looked again I can see that their are references to a Edinburgh portion.
Officially this service only ceased to run in 2003.

With all this, I would not be surprised if this was a launch poster of some kind.
I have a double royal (that's the size) launch poster for 'The Capitals United Express' which was introduced in 1956 between London Paddington and Cardiff General (sometimes through to Swansea High Street or Fishguard Harbour)

 

[Peter C]

I can't really add much to what's already been said apart from it looks like the poster is an original - just found this online (my bold):

GIANT British Railway LMS GWR original vintage advertising poster ‘27. Royal Scot, 1927. Original and vintage LMS British railway poster advertising the Royal Scot service between London, Euston and Edinburgh and Glasgow. Six sheet art deco masterpiece, measuring a colossal 78x117 inches and in excellent condition with only the most minor signs of age and wear. Some small areas of retouching at some crossfolds but, on the whole, astonishingly well preserved for such a large format poster. Backed onto linen. A truly magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece and almost certainly the only surviving copy.

Titled Trains of Great Britain by Cecil J. Allen (first printed 1946, fifth edition printed 1967) includes the following regarding the Royal Scot services in 1927, to add to what @Kingston Flyer has said already:

In the recovery period from 1919 onwards, the down and up trains reappeared in much their previous form, but from 1927 onwards developments began to take place. [...] In the summer of 1927 the L.M.S.R. made the "Royal Scot" a train for through passengers between London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow only. A "Claughton" 4-6-0, piloted by a "George the Fifth" 4-4-0, hauled the train non-stop to Carnforth, 236 miles from Euston; here a stop was made at Carnforth No. 2 box, south of the station, to examine the train, and a couple of 4-4-0 compounds took over for the run over Shap and Beattock summits to Symington, 130 miles distant, where the Edinburgh portion was detached before the final run into Glasgow.
That summer the L.N.E.R. tried non-stop running from London to Newcastle, 268.3 miles, so the L.M.S.R., now in possession of its new "Royal Scot" 4-6-0 engines, cut out the Carnforth stop, and on the northbound journey ran through over the 301 miles from Euston to Kingmoor, 2 miles north of Carlisle.

Hopefully this should be of use to those interested in the service?

-Peter

 

[Dr Hoo]

Very tentatively can I suggest that it may be the work of Cassandre (pseudonym of Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron). He did a lot of railway and shipping line poster work in in Europe, in the 1920s, including other images for the LMS. The rendering of the buffer faces is very much in his style. [Thanks to Railway Posters by Thierry Favre.]

E.g. [Not my image, grabbed from a quick google.]
View attachment 97837