Norman Wilkinson’s Scotland Boxed Notecards

Posters from the Collection of the National Railway Museum, York

During the 1920s and 1930s a global depression and foreign competition brought unemployment to many regions of Scotland. At the same time, railway companies operating in Scotland were struggling to compete with trucking firms and private automobiles. Two of Great Britain’s four big railways, the London, Midland & Scottish Railway and the London & North Eastern Railway, enlisted the artist Norman Wilkinson (English, 1878–1971), who would create for them a golden vision, an alternative to the stark modern world.

Wilkinson’s brilliantly executed posters generally alluded only in passing to steam engines; instead they tempted travelers with a destination, a climate, a flock of seagulls. And then he placed the travelers in that place, idling figures in the middle distance with time on their hands, blithe, not a worry in the world.

The National Railway Museum, York, is the largest railway museum in the world. Its permanent displays and collections illustrate over 300 years of British railway history, from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. The NRM archive also includes a fabulous collection of railway advertising posters charting the history of rail.