Thursday 25 February 2010

Still On About Railways,

these and many other beautiful railway posters are coming up for sale, when British Rail was formed Malcolm Guest worked at Paddington Station in the early Sixties, ‘In the offices and archives was all this memorabilia and posters that were no longer wanted by British Rail and were going to be destroyed, what Malcolm Guest did was ask if he could have it and squirreled it away to make probably the best private collection of railway memorabilia ever seen,' according to railway historian and author Dr Richard Furness,
‘Some 30,000 of these posters just got burnt at Waterloo station in the 1960s, they would be worth about £20million today, I would estimate the collection of posters are worth about £600,000, the original artwork about £250,000 and the railway ephemera about £50,000'
sadly Malcolm died last year aged 66, His terrace house was 'filled to the gunwales' with his beloved collection, now thought to be worth almost £1 million, for me although I could never afford to own anyone of these posters, it is so nice to know that Malcolm had the fore thought to save these wonderful pieces of art work that we can now admire.

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