Waterloo drawer discovery will cap Tony’s return to the auction scene

A COLLECTION of 25 Southern Railway cap cloth badges discovered in a drawer at Waterloo in the early 1980s will feature in GW Railwayana’s timed auction that runs from April 1-17.

They are being sold by a collector who was given them when he was a graduate trainee at the London terminus. Among the occupations depicted on the badges are roles that recall the pre-Nationalisation era, including ‘relief loader,’‘foreman van setter, ’leading porter,’‘sheeter,’ and ‘cartage foreman.’

Items from the collection of the late Major John Poyntz, who served in the Royal Engineers and was HM Inspecting Officer of Railways from 1989 to 2006, will also be going under the hammer, including Longmoor Military Railway memorabilia.

The auction will comprise 350 lots of general railwayana and is the first of a series of such sales organised by GWRA’s Simon Turner and Tony Hoskins, who, as reported in issue 289, have teamed up again six years after Tony retired as a director of the auction house. A timed auction is one in which online bids may be made in a defined period and finish in timed blocks.