Railwayana is BIG business
Geoff Courtney summarises the current railwayana market which, after seven decades, has become big business ... but still retains its early appeal even as collecting trends have changed.
Seventy years ago, railwayana collecting was for the few, an esoteric hobby that attracted minimal interest. By the early 1960s it had grown but was still in its infancy, and even a decade later it was only just entering adolescence. In the 1980s it was reaching maturity... and with that came specialist railwayana auction houses, and an appeal that stretched beyond our shores.
Today it is a multi-million pound business which, doubtless to the surprise of many of its adherents, has boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic, to the extent that there is now a bewildering array of auctions and collections coming onto the market in a seemingly neverending wave.
From the very beginning the focal point of collecting was nameplates, and BR’s Western Region was the first on the scene, selling nameplates out of Swindon for £2 whatever class they came from. But in the mid-1960s this was increased in one step to £15 due to their popularity.
One of railwayana’s most respected collectors, Mike Soden, who is auctioneer for Great Central Railwayana, recalls buying in 1964 one of the nameplates from No. 7011 Banbury Castle for just £2, having reserved it some years previously when still at school. He still has it, and says “it will go with me to my grave”.
The increased price of £15 was maintained by the Western Region until its entire stock was exhausted, but private collectors starting putting them on the market at around £50, often via advertisements in railway magazines.
Other regions followed in the Western Region’s wake, and by the early 1970s Collectors’ Corner, BR’s railwayana store that was opened at the end of 1969, was listing LMS ‘Jubilee’ plates at £70, LNER A1s at £150 and A3s at £180. The price curve was very much on the up.
Nameplate mania
Such a trend attracted leading auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, while in October 1986 Railway Collectors Newsletter made its auction debut, and in 1987 Sheffield Railwayana Auctions... and so the specialist die was cast. Other similar auction houses were launched, venues and catalogues became more sophisticated, and so too the houses’ modus operandi and in some cases the clientele. What started as a hobby starting to become a flourishing business sector. Steam nameplate prices were at their peak in most classes in around 2004, when Golden Fleece, from A4 No. 60030, which had been bought for £11 in 1963, went under the hammer for £60,000 in Sheffield, although there was a one-off in November 2018 when Flying Scotsman from No. 60103 was sold by GW Railwayana for £64,500, a world record that by general consensus is never expected to be beaten.
During the nameplate mania in around 2004, some railwayana cognoscenti were hailing them as a good investment but, as with much 21st century financial forecasting, that proved to be a false hope. One collector told me recently that an LNER A1 Pacific name and worksplate for which he paid £20,000 in 2004 may be worth half that today – but like many collectors in a similar
situation, he is sanguine about its drop in value and says he genuinely still enjoys seeing the plate whenever he enters his railwayana den. Most steam nameplate classes have had such a rollercoaster ride over the past two decades, but others are bucking the trend, including ‘Jubilees’, which still have a strong following.
Trainspotting locations
There is much, much more to the railwayana movement than simply nameplates, and in this regard there are shining beacons that are currently making a play for the limelight. One such category is totem station signs, which remind collectors of their younger days in a very visible and recognisable way due to them bringing back memories of home towns or villages, or trainspotting locations. They have long been stalwarts in railwayana auctions, but today they are leaders, as illustrated by a Great Central Railwayana auction on February 20 in which Broad Street from the now-closed London terminus was the top seller at £11,200, while Brecon also reached top spot in a GW Railwayana sale on March 13 with a realisation of £12,100.
Indeed, enamel signs generally are very popular, and so too London Underground platform roundels, especially those from central stations in the capital, which are increasingly achieving four-figure prices and are showing no signs of slowing down.
Posters, which have been part of the UK railway scene since its early days, were to be found on almost every station in the Big Four interwar years, their popularity being fuelled in part by many of them being the work of some of the top artists of the era. Over time many have been destroyed, lost, or succumbed to poor storage, but the survivors are capable of joining the Underground signs in four-figure auction territory, and understandably so – they are colourful, usually beautifully drawn, attractive when professionally framed, and look as good in the lounge or dining room as in exile in the railwayana room.
Downsizing
Furthering the artistic theme, carriage prints are an integral part of many collections, and are invariably more affordable than posters. They may not be as evocative as posters and are frequently of scenes that have no connection with a collector’s past, but an excuse can often be found to collect them, perhaps, for example, acquiring a complete set of one’s home county. For many collectors, display space is at a premium, be it due to downsizing or simply because the railwayana den is full of so much from nameplates downwards. Thus paperwork has its attractions, be they old timetables, locomotive records, leaflets, pocket maps – London Underground Harry Beck first editions from 1933 invariably set the tills ringing – brochures, and also Ian Allan ABCs from the 1950s, or perhaps more recently (and not only of railways, but buses and cars too).
Tickets is another branch of the hobby that has a wide audience, to the extent that there are now such specialists as Paddington Ticket Auctions, a part of the Great Central Railwayana group. One of this subsidiary’s recent sales saw a collection of 91 Chinese and Japanese tickets dating from pre-First World War to the early 1970s, sell for a total of £10,760, which is steam nameplate territory. From nameplates to tickets, and totem signs to leaflets, railwayana has over seven decades become big business while retaining its attraction to the steam, and now diesel, generation. ■