Railwayana

Geoff Courtney’s regular column.

TOTEM station sign Brecon – from the Western Region mid-Wales station that opened in 1867, closed to passengers in December 1962, and was the location of shed 89B – achieved the highest realisation of £12,100 in GW Railwayana’s two-day live online auction on March 12-13. It was the second time in three weeks that a totem had swept all before it, following a hammer price of £11,200 for BR(M) Broad Street at Great Central’s sale on February 20.

Behind Brecon in the totem category came two further Western Region totems, Bath Spa (£6600) and Dovey Junction (£6000). In total, 11 such station signs went under the hammer for more than £3000.

Steam nameplates were led by Leander from LMS Jubilee No. 45690 (£10,100) and Bampton Grange from GWR No. 6802 (£9500), whose cabside numberplate went immediately after for £2900, while Knowsley Hall

(GWR No. 5905) and Barcote Manor

(GWR No. 7803) went for £7100 and £6700 respectively.

Mixing it with the nameplates and totems was a pair of 100-year-old

Railway Signal Co demonstration working scale model miniature electric staff instruments that sold for £8400. And to show this wasn’t a one-off, a Railway Signal Co fully interlocked demonstration scale model 13-lever frame representing a double-line layout achieved £6900, and a similar five-lever demonstration scale model £5200.

Back in the nameplate sector, modern traction shone below the Hall and Manor, with Glastonbury Tor from Class 60 heavy freight Co-Co diesel No. 60039 selling for £5600, while the electrics were led at £3300 by Charles Dickens from Co-Co No. 92022, which worked the first scheduled Class 92-hauled train through the Channel Tunnel, a service for which these locos were designed.

Realisations

Victory among the smokebox numberplates went to 46164 from LMS Royal Scot The Artists’ Rifleman (£4800), narrowly ahead of 6008 from GWR King James II (£4700), top cabside was 4040 from GWR Star class Queen Boadicea (£4300), and the leading steam worksplate at £1400 was an 1897 Dübs & Co (works No. 3517) from ex-LSWR 700 class 0-6-0 No. 30694.

This old-timer, which spent its entire 64-year working life at London’s Nine Elms depot (70A), was, however, outsold in the worksplate line-up by a 1965 Beyer Peacock Gorton example (serial No. 8034) from Class 25 Bo-Bo diesel D7624/25274 (£3100).

A Furness Railway Messenger & Sons’ three-aspect handlamp plated FRC No. 1 and Vickers Gun Range Sidings Signal Box went under the hammer for £4700, a Bristol Joint Station signalbox door notice prohibiting unauthorised entry for £2700, and a GWR Bishops Nympton & Molland Signal Box nameboard for £2000.

Artwork featured a BR(Sc) St Andrews poster by James McIntosh Patrick (1907-98) that sold for £3300, and a painting by Barry Freeman of LMS

Jubilee Nos. 45608 Gibraltar and 45729 Furious on the Down‘Waverley’at Ais Gill in the late-1950s which fetched £3100, and among the doorplate enamels were BR(NE)‘Left luggage telegrams’(£2400) and‘Ladies waiting room’ (£2000).

Moving from the north-east to the capital, two London Underground platform roundels, Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, went under Simon Turner’s hammer for £2300 and £2200 respectively, while back up the east coast, a Victorian reminder of a short rural railway that operated as an independent company for just 16 years sold for £1600.

It was an engraved spade presented to W Burdett Coutts on the occasion of turning the first sod of the Sutton & Willoughby Railway on August 15, 1885. This 10-mile east Lincolnshire railway operated its first trains in October 1886 and soon ran into financial difficulties due to a failed dock project at Suttonle-Marsh – was the sole reason for its construction. It was absorbed by the Great Northern Railway in March 1902. Prices exclude buyer’s

premium of 15% (+ VAT).

As he reflected post-sale on the hammer price total of more than £610,000 over the two days, Simon said: “Phenomenal. We had 1140 online bidders and in excess of 400 commission bids. The prices of the three Railway Signal Co models were an immense surprise, and totems were unbelievable.

Future

“We are in a different world at the moment. Everything has changed, but is it for ever? We definitely won’t be holding a live audience auction this year, but next year who knows? Possibly in the summer.”