Edwardian Railways in Postcards

Edwardian Railways in Postcards dips into the history of Britain’s railways through the phenomenal popularity of the railway postcard between 1902 and 1915. Postcard collecting is a hobby as old as the picture postcard itself, and railway postcards were amongst the medium’s first collectables. Through the postcard, almost every aspect of equipping and operating a railway was explored. In the Edwardian era, annual postcard sales are thought to have exceeded 500,000,000, and the public who bought them sought an infinite variety of subject matter. Publishers vied with each other to produce more and more visually interesting cards, and all the big railway companies produced their own sets of ‘official’ postcards to advertise the extent of their network, and promote the modernity of their operations. Some of the 290 postcards included in this book are extremely rare, and offer a unique insight into the ‘golden age’ of both the postcard and Britain’s railways. John Hannavy is a writer, photographer, photographic historian and incurable steam enthusiast. A retired academic, he now devotes his time to exploring, photographing and writing about Britain’s industrial past. This book, his seventh for Halsgrove, is a companion volume to Edwardian Mining in Old Postcards. Imprint: PiXZ Books. ISBN 978 0 85710 115 0, hardback, 210x148mm, 144 pages.