ABSTRACT
When the Railway Magazine made its first appearance on the bookstalls in 1897, British and Irish railways did not number among their excellences a true appreciation of the aid that art and literature contributes in expanding the volume of holiday travel with consequent benefit to railway receipts. So long as the patient public were plentifully provided with timetable information, surely that was sufficient! The picture poster and the artistically illustrated booklet were not unknown, but the output was diminutive compared with the avalanche of literature and the plentitude of posters that heralded each summer season in the early days and during the adolescence of the twentieth century. Then came the war and a gradual stoppage of all enticement, much more inducement, to travel, until in fact the fares were raised for the avowed purpose of compelling the would-be traveller to stay at home and thus avoid congesting the lines needed for military traffic. Fares thus raised were afterwards maintained and further increased to meet growing railway expenditure, but since then—and particularly pronounced it is in this year of grace 1922—there has been a tendency to give the holiday maker such advantages, he will seek recreation by travel, and that in comfort by railway, rather than by racing the roads in motor coaches where he will, as the poet puts it, “breathe clouds of dust and call it country air.” As a result we are witnessing some return to the prewar standard of railway art and literature and not a few Railway Magazine readers are watching the developments with keen interest.
