Station signs mix and match with GWR in London sale

STATION enamel signs, an assortment of GWR items and a colourful GWR poster, comprised the leading Big Four and BR railwayana realisations in a Transport Auctions of London sale on June 25.

Top enamels were a BR(NE) totem from Percy Main, which went for £1600, a BR(M) footpath direction sign to Walton Junction station (£850), and a second totem, from the Southern Region station of Three Bridges (£800). The last price was matched by 25 GWR glasses, five items of silverware, and a ganger’s horn and a look-out armband, all sold as a single lot.

Still with the GWR, a cabside numberplate from 0-6-0PT No. 7711, which became London Transport No. L90 on its withdrawal by BR in 1956, fetched £650, while a bid of £500 secured a GWR Ross-on-Wye poster by Reginald Lander (1913-80), who also produced work for the LNER, BR and the Post Office.

On the London Underground front, a 1947 poster map designed by Harry Beck, who created the landmark diagrammatic map of the system first issued in January 1933, went under the hammer for £1600, another from the same year, although with postwar updates, for £950, and an Earl’s Court station platform roundel for £850. Prices exclude buyer’s premium of 15% (+ VAT).

TAL director Michael Wickham said that, although the current economic situation appeared to be leading to buyers’ caution, he was able to report that nearly 98% of the lots sold, a record for his auction house.