August 2022

Carriage Prints

As we enjoy the last few weeks of summer, August’s Object of the Month looks at a set of beautifully designed carriage prints depicting idyllic holiday destinations.

The GWR was an innovative self-publicist and from the 1890s they used a new method of advertising which was to promote the holiday resorts across the GWR network in order to get people to travel to them by rail.  One of the main methods of promotion was to install prints of key destinations into framed panels in the walls of railway carriages.  Many of the earlier carriage panels were stylised photographs, coloured using a method called Photocrom.

British Railways Publicity Department continued with the use of carriage prints and in 1954 commissioned well known artists to produce watercolour paintings of tourist locations across the network.  Prints from the paintings were used in carriages to advertise beautiful destinations.  This set of prints in STEAM’s collection are part of the Western Region Series which decorated the walls of passenger carriages from the mid 1950’s.