Welcome to the Poster to Poster Series

The ‘must’ have for railway enthusiasts

The Poster to Poster series is a nine-volume definitive collection of railway posters which showcases many of the railway posters from the National Railway Museum at York, UK and Swann Galleries, New York, USA. Each volume is a mixture of travel documentary, geographical and historical study, graphic artists’ reference and poster database – all interlinked using the central theme of railway posters. The first seven volumes uses our National Collection to take a journey around Britain. Volume 8 takes you on a journey of wonderful continental destinations such as France, Germany and Italy, as well as Ireland and North America. Volume 9, Rails Across America, takes a journey around the USA from the east to the west coast. The result is a stunning artistic guide to British, continental and American destinations and railway poster heritage.

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These colourful books showcase the posters as if readers are taking railway journeys. Not only are the posters beautifully presented, these books cover in more depth than before the history, geography and commercial aspects of each place visited allowing the book to be a wonderful educational travelogue, as well as an extensive poster guide. The central core of each book is the posters, carriage prints and original paintings. You’ll find many unpublished materials and posters too.

Each book features a regional journey, literally moving from ‘Poster to Poster’ and detailed regional databases are found towards the rear of every volume.   This has been compiled from a variety of sources, from all over the world, to appreciate what posters have been issued by the railways.  Publishing lists of available posters is long overdue. This allows the number of Lancashire, Edinburgh or Norfolk posters, for example, to be appreciated.

The series showcases some of the greatest collections of railway posters to be found anywhere in the world. How it all starts Of the several thousand posters published since the Victorian era, less than 10% had featured in poster books, before our first volumes became available.  By the end of the project, between 2,500 and 3,000 images will have been included through the series.

Before this project started in 2002, there were no definitive books about railway posters from the early days of railways right up to the present day.  There are poster books that cover the so-called ‘Golden Age’ from 1923-1947 and recently, some excellent books about London Transport and Underground advertising have become available.  However, the subject of railway posters in the whole of the 20th century has been sadly neglected.  Our aim in undertaking the project, therefore, was to redress this deficiency.