Abstract
Whilst destinations were the significant lure in railway advertising throughout this period, escalating competition from motor cars and buses necessitated that the GWR rethink the popular image of travel. Most passengers could cite negative experiences, and the company recognised that to safeguard its business these impressions had to be subverted. This chapter examines the GWR’s attempts to redress rail’s reputation through photographic advertising. It shows how a rigorous process of researching passenger complaints helped to inform promotional photography which created particular narratives about consumption on board the train. The company put the effectiveness of advertising to the test in convincing customers that railway carriages really could rival the convenience, privacy and cachet of the mass-produced motor car.
Our grandfathers, when they wanted to advertise railway-travel, used the picture of a locomotive. This, to modern eyes, does not seem a very effective way to arouse in the bosom of an observer the desire to be conveyed … the real subject of every advertisement is not the product but the service that it gives.(“Picturing the Product,” The Advertising World, September 1924, 550)
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Notes
- 1.
To be clear from the start, this chapter does not suggest that the GWR was not proud of, or neglected the publicity opportunities of its designs; there is plenty of evidence in support of this. It refers chiefly to its place within the general holiday advertising distributed to the average public.
- 2.
Peter Lyth, “‘Think of Her as Your Mother’: Airline Advertising and the Stewardess in America, 1930–1980,” Journal of Transport History 30, no. 1 (2009): 4.
- 3.
These issues continue to concern modern-day travel planners, such as in the case of the metro railway in Delhi, India, where galvanising public support and attracting patrons centred on creating a positive image that ‘combined tangible variables with an intangible set of symbolic meanings’. Matti Siemiatycki, “Message in a Metro: Building Urban Rail Infrastructure and Image in Delhi, India,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 2 (2006).
- 4.
Chris de Winter-Hebron, Dining at Speed: A Celebration of 125 Years of Railway Catering (Kettering: Silver Link, 2004), 10–13; John Gloag, Victorian Comfort: A Social History of Design from 1830–1900 (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1973), 160–61; Phillip Bagwell, The Railway Clearing House In The British Economy 1842–1922 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), 58.
- 5.
See for example “Railway Unpunctuality and Public Health,” The British Medical Journal, October 13, 1883, 734; “Warming Railway Carriages,” The British Medical Journal, January 24, 1885, 189; “Damp Railway Carriages,” The British Medical Journal, December 20, 1884, 1256; “Women’s Lavatories at Railway Stations,” The British Medical Journal, January 29, 1910, 294.
- 6.
David Jenkinson, British Railway Carriages of the 20th Century (Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens, 1984), 134–35.
- 7.
Colin Divall and Hiroki Shin, “Cultures of Speed and Conservative Modernity: Representations of Speed in Britain’s Railway Marketing,” in Trains, Culture, and Mobility: Riding the Rails: Volume 2, ed. Benjamin Fraser and Steven Spalding (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012), 12–14.
- 8.
Ed Bartholomew and Michael Blakemore, Railways In Focus: Photographs From The National Railway Museum Collections (Penryn: Atlantic Transport, 1998), 12–15.
- 9.
“What the Camera Can Do,” The Advertising World, November, 1911, 580.
- 10.
“The Camera and Commercial Art,” The Advertising World, June, 1912, 668.
- 11.
Elizabeth Anne Cavaliere, “Canada by Photograph: Instructed Looking and Tourism of the Late Nineteenth-century Canadian Landscape,” Histoire sociale/Social History 49, no. 99 (2016): 308.
- 12.
Walter George Chapman, The 10.30 Limited (London : Great Western Railway, 1923).
- 13.
Colin Divall, “The Modern Passenger: Constructing the Consumer on Britain’s Railways, 1919–1939,” in Railway Modernization: An Historical Perspective, 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Magda Pinheiro (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de História Contemporânea Portuguesa, 2009), 110–13.
- 14.
The National Archives (TNA), ZPER 38/13, Great Western Railway (London): Lecture and Debating Society Proceedings 1920–1921, Meeting of 31st March 1921, pp. 1–10; ZPER 38/26, Great Western Railway (London): Lecture and Debating Society Proceedings 1933–1934, Meeting 31st March 1934, 1–10.
- 15.
Great Western Railway Magazine, July, 1922, 271. GWRM hereafter.
- 16.
GWRM, December, 1926, 395.
- 17.
First Introduced in 1927, GWRM, September, 1927, 351.
- 18.
It is impossible to tell why the page disappeared in the 1930s; perhaps with the introduction of formal staff salesmanship courses this kind of instruction became further ‘internalised’. Indeed, the magazine continued to tell interested readers from the general public what the GWR was doing to better their experience, but announcements of instances when the company had ‘got this wrong’ stopped altogether.
- 19.
“Locomotive Interchange,” Financial Times, April 14, 1925, 3; “Exchanged Engines Test,” The Times, May 12, 1925, 10; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, April 13, 1925, 4.
- 20.
Tad Burness, Classic Railroad Advertising: Riding the Rails Again (Iola, Wis.: Krause, 2001), 6–8; Gregory Votolato, Transport Design: A Travel History (London: Reaktion, 2007), 47; Allen Middleton, It’s Quicker By Rail!: The History Of LNER Advertising (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2002), 46.
- 21.
Michael Bonavia, The Four Great Railways (Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 1980), 74–80.
- 22.
“High Speed as a Means of Advertising,” The Railway Gazette, July 22, 1910, 109.
- 23.
GWRM, January, 1927, 29.
- 24.
GWRM, January, 1927, 29. Punctuality made frequent appearances in the ‘People We Intend To Please Section’: see GWRM, April, 1927, 148; February 1928, 75; July 1928, 293.
- 25.
“Streamlined Competition,” The Times, July 6, 1937, 17.
- 26.
TNA, RAIL 1107/9, Meeting of 13th February 1936, 32–37.
- 27.
Felix Pole, His Book (London: Town and Country Press, 1969), 84.
- 28.
TNA, RAIL 1107/9, Meeting of 13th February 1936, 32–37.
- 29.
GWRM, November 1927, 447.
- 30.
GWRM, January 1928, 31.
- 31.
GWRM, March 1927, 447.
- 32.
Phillip Unwin, Travelling By Train In The Edwardian Age (London: George Allen & Unwin 1979), 58–59.
- 33.
James Walvin, Beside The Seaside: A Social History Of The Popular Seaside Holiday (London: Allen Lane, 1978), 116.
- 34.
Bonavia, The Four Great Railways, 102–07.
- 35.
Rosa Matheson, Trip: The Annual Holiday of GWR’s Swindon Works (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), 23–26; Phillip Unwin, Travelling By Train in the ‘Twenties and ‘Thirties (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 36–37.
- 36.
GWRM, October, 1928, 401.
- 37.
GWRM, July, 1929, 287.
- 38.
Archibald Williams, Brunel And After: The Romance Of The Great Western Railway (London: Great Western Railway, 1925), 161–89.
- 39.
GWRM, August, 1927, 335.
- 40.
GWRM, June 1927, 218.
- 41.
GWRM, August, 1927, 335.
- 42.
GWRM, January, 1927, 29.
- 43.
GWRM, April, 1929, 163.
- 44.
TNA, RAIL 1107/9, Meeting of 13th February 1936, 32–37.
- 45.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization Of Time and Space In The Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 74.
- 46.
Julian Treuherz, ‘The Human Drama of The Railway’, in The Railway: Art In The Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway 1830–1960, ed. Ian Kennedy and Julian Treuherz (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 83–118.
- 47.
Ralph Harrington, ‘The Railway Journey and The Neuroses Of Modernity’, in Pathologies of Travel, ed. Richard Wrigley and George Revill (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 236–39; Ian Carter, Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 202–04.
- 48.
See, for example, GWRM, February, 1939, 67–68; March, 1939, 125;
- 49.
The Railway and Travel Monthly, January, 1914.
- 50.
GWRM, August, 1918, 117.
- 51.
GWRM, August, 1918, 117.
- 52.
GWRM, May, 1914, 123.
- 53.
TNA, ZPER 38/13, Meeting of 31st March 1921, 1–10.
- 54.
TNA, ZPER 38/13, Meeting of 31st March 1921, 4.
- 55.
TNA, ZPER 38/26, Meeting 22nd March 1934, 1–10.
- 56.
Advertiser’s Weekly, April 11, 1930.
- 57.
The Autocar, October 12, 1928.
- 58.
The Autocar, July 5, 1935.
- 59.
The Autocar, February 7, 1936.
- 60.
The Autocar, April 7, 1933.
- 61.
The Autocar, October 31, 1930.
- 62.
The Autocar, July 28, 1925.
- 63.
The Autocar, June 23, 1925.
- 64.
“A Brief Review of the Company’s Hundred Years of Business,” GWRM, September, 1935, 496.
- 65.
See for example, GWRM, September 1922; October 1924; October 1927.
- 66.
“Seeing Britain by Train,” The Railway Gazette, August 15, 1930, 208.
- 67.
The Streamline Way: Inauguration of Express Streamlined Rail Car Service Between Birmingham and Cardiff (London: Great Western Railway, 1934).
- 68.
TNA, RAIL 1107/9, Meeting of 13th February 1936, 32–37.
- 69.
National Railway Museum (NRM), GWR B Series: Negatives 13486–12492 depict a new buffet car; 14553–14569 show a restaurant car; 12114–12119 portray passengers about to embark a train and so on.
- 70.
Roland Marchand, Advertising The American Dream: Making Way For Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 238–54.
- 71.
John Benson, The Rise Of Consumer Society In Britain, 1880–1980 (London: Longman, 1994), 129–30.
- 72.
Colin Divall, “Civilising Velocity: Masculinity and the Marketing of Britain’s Passenger Trains, 1921-39,” Journal of Transport History 32, no. 2 (2011): 6.
- 73.
LNER, Weekly Holiday Season Tickets—Eastern Counties (1936).
- 74.
The Holiday Handbook (London: London and North Eastern Railway, 1937).
- 75.
Marchand, Advertising The American Dream, 162–63.
- 76.
See Votolato, Transport Design, 48–49, for an in-depth description of American advances in carriage design.
- 77.
The Daily Mirror, July 11, 1934. A short piece was also run in The Times, August 31, 1935.
- 78.
GWRM, December, 1926, 395.
- 79.
‘It is true to say that the majority of the complaints received by any Railway Company are concerned with matters arising between the staff and the public – discourtesy, carelessness, indifference, thoughtlessness, and so on – not always directly, because many of these failings lead to the creation of a situation the man himself could hardly be expected to visualise: when for example he throws a parcel on to the platform he probably has not troubled to notice beforehand that it is fragile, but a claim results just the same. Similarly the Shunter who allows rough shunting to continue does not give the question of damage a thought. The Restaurant Car Attendant who serves up a meal in a “take it or leave it” attitude does not realise that because the passenger suffers in silence he has lost the Company a customer’, TNA, RAIL 1107/9, Meeting of 13th February 1936, 32–37.
- 80.
For more on this character, see Tony Hillman and Beverley Cole, South for Sunshine: Southern Railway Publicity and Posters, 1923 to 1947 (Harrow Weald: Capital Transport in association with the National Railway Museum, 1999), 50.
- 81.
Peter Lyth and Philip Bagwell, Transport in Britain: From Canal Lock To Gridlock (London: Hambledon and London, 2002), 80; Sean O’Connell, The Car In British Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 79.
- 82.
Votolato, Transport Design, 47; Divall and Shin, ‘Cultures of Speed and Conservative Modernity’, 12–14.
- 83.
John Walton, “Power, Speed and Glamour: The Naming Of Express Steam Locomotives In Interwar Britain,” Journal Of Transport History 26, no. 2 (2005): 1–16.
Bibliography
Unpublished Archival Sources
National Railway Museum (NRM) GWR B Series.
The National Archives (TNA), ZPER 38/13, Great Western Railway (London): Lecture and Debating Society Proceedings 1920–1921.
TNA, ZPER 38/26, Great Western Railway (London): Lecture and Debating Society Proceedings 1933–1934.
RAIL 1107/9, Railway Students’ Association, Proceedings of Sessions 1934–1936.
Sales Publications and Guidebooks
Chapman, Walter George. The 10.30 Limited. London: Great Western Railway, 1923.
The Holiday Handbook. London: London and North Eastern Railway, 1937.
Holiday Haunts. London: Great Western Railway, Multiple Editions.
LNER. Weekly Holiday Season Tickets—Eastern Counties. London: London and North Eastern Railway, 1936.
The Streamline Way: Inauguration of Express Streamlined Rail Car Service Between Birmingham and Cardiff. London: Great Western Railway, 1934.
Williams, Archibald. Brunel and After: The Romance of the Great Western Railway. London: Great Western Railway, 1925.
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Pole, Felix. Felix J.C. Pole: His Book. London: Town and Country Press, 1969.
Periodicals and Newspapers
The Advertising World
The Autocar
The British Medical Journal
The Daily Mirror
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette
Financial Times
The Great Western Railway Magazine
The Railway Gazette
The Times
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Bagwell, Phillip. The Railway Clearing House in the British Economy 1842–1922. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968.
Bartholomew, Ed, and Michael Blakemore. Railways in Focus: Photographs from the National Railway Museum Collections. Penryn: Atlantic Transport, 1998.
Benson, John. The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain, 1880–1980. London: Longman, 1994.
Bonavia, Michael. The Four Great Railways. Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 1980.
Burness, Tad. Classic Railroad Advertising: Riding the Rails Again. Iola, Wis.: Krause, 2001.
Carter, Ian. Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
Cavaliere, Elizabeth Anne. “Canada by Photograph: Instructed Looking and Tourism of the Late Nineteenth-Century Canadian Landscape.” Histoire Sociale/Social History 49, no. 99 (2016): 307–25.
de Winter-Hebron, Chris. Dining at Speed: A Celebration of 125 Years of Railway Catering. Kettering: Silver Link, 2004.
Divall, Colin. “Civilising Velocity: Masculinity and the Marketing of Britain’s Passenger Trains, 1921–39.” Journal of Transport History 32, no. 2 (2011): 164–91.
———. “The Modern Passenger: Constructing the Consumer on Britain’s Railways, 1919–1939.” In Railway Modernization: An Historical Perspective, 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Magda Pinheiro, 110–25. Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de História Contemporânea Portuguesa, 2009.
———, and Hiroki Shin. “Cultures of Speed and Conservative Modernity: Representations of Speed in Britain’s Railway Marketing.” In Trains, Culture, and Mobility: Riding the Rails: Volume 2, edited by Benjamin Fraser and Steven Spalding, 3–26. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012.
Gloag, John. Victorian Comfort: A Social History of Design from 1830–1900. Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1973.
Harrington, Ralph. “The Railway Journey and the Neuroses of Modernity.” In Pathologies of Travel, edited by Richard Wrigley and George Revill, 229–59. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.
Hillman, Tony, and Beverley Cole. South for Sunshine: Southern Railway Publicity and Posters, 1923 to 1947. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport in Association with the National Railway Museum, 1999.
Jenkinson, David. British Railway Carriages of the 20th Century. Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens, 1984.
Lyth, Peter. “‘Think of Her as Your Mother’: Airline Advertising and the Stewardess in America, 1930–1980.” Journal of Transport History 30, no. 1 (2009): 1–21.
———, and Philip Bagwell. Transport in Britain: From Canal Lock to Gridlock. London: Hambledon and London, 2002.
Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Matheson, Rosa. Trip: The Annual Holiday of GWR’s Swindon Works. Stroud: Tempus, 2006.
Middleton, Allen. It’s Quicker by Rail!: The History of LNER Advertising. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2002.
O’Connell, Sean. The Car in British Society. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Siemiatycki, Matti. “Message in a Metro: Building Urban Rail Infrastructure and Image in Delhi, India.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 2 (2006): 277–92.
Treuherz, Julian. “The Human Drama of the Railway.” In The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway 1830–1960, edited by Ian Kennedy and Julian Treuherz, 83–118. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Unwin, Phillip. Travelling by Train in the Edwardian Age. London: George Allen & Unwin 1979.
———. Travelling by Train in the ‘Twenties and ‘Thirties. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.
Votolato, Gregory. Transport Design: A Travel History. London: Reaktion, 2007.
Walton, John L. “Power, Speed and Glamour: The Naming of Express Steam Locomotives in Interwar Britain.” Journal of Transport History 26, no. 2 (2005): 1–19.
Walvin, James. Beside the Seaside: A Social History of the Popular Seaside Holiday. London: Allen Lane, 1978.
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Medcalf, A. (2018). On the Train. In: Railway Photographic Advertising in Britain, 1900-1939. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70857-7_6
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