River Thames, London
Frank Mason

RAILWAY CARRIAGE PRINTS

Whitby, Yorkshire
Rowland Hilder

• WAS IT Once possible to travel on a Waterloo to Exeter train and see Brighton pier en-route? - or travel on the Flying Scotsman and gain a view of Durham, ten minutes out of Kings Cross?  Or could you once catch a suburban train from Euston and see a boat on Lake Windermere before you reached Watford? The answer to each question was yes - if you had a carriage panel to gaze at on your journey!

• A TRAVELLING Picture Show!
  Many people can still remember the days when their journeys were enhanced by the framed pictures which kept them company in British railway compartments during the age of steam.
  From the mid 1930s to the late 1960s, trains virtually became travelling art galleries!

Jack Merriott

produced 38 illustrations for carriage prints

• THE PUBLICITY Departments first portrayed themselves through scenic photographs and then moved into colour reproduction and commissioned some of the leading watercolour artists of the day, including Rowland Hilder, Frank Mason, Leonard Squirrell, James McIntosh-Patrick and Claude Buckle to paint scenes from all around the UK, to be displayed as prints in the carriages. Like the pictorial posters on railway stations, and often by the same artists, these landscapes brought a splash of colour to a dreary or routine journey.