Poster: Marlborough and Calne Great Western Railway poster – 1904
The Great Western Railway was founded in 1833. It was engineered by the now famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel and ran their first trains five years later on Brunel’s 7ft wide broad gauge rail lines. The company’s network linked London with the south west and west of England as well as the West Midlands and most of Wales.
In 1903, just a year before this poster was published, the GWR offered a new method of transport for passengers travelling to areas that the railway lines hadn’t yet reached or were unlikely to be linked to. The introduction of the Great Western Railway Motor Services, effectively a rural bus service, was seen as a cheaper alternative building railway lines.
According to Wikipedia, GWR were faced with an estimate of £85,000 to build a light railway to service Helston in Cornwall. Instead the company bought two buses to operate the Heston service. The new service would have the motor vehicles pick up and drop off passengers from otherwise difficult to reach destinations, to and from the railway stations. The service was a success. It proved so profitable and popular that more routes were soon established. By the end of 1904, 36 buses were in operation, 10 more than were in service in London. In 1928 the GWR had the largest railway bus fleet in Britain.
The chocolate-and-cream colored vehicles used for the routes became a familiar sight in those regions, and the GWR road services made history as the first successful bus operations run by a British railroad. The enterprise remained in operation until 1933, with GWR ultimately handing over the management of the routes to private bus companies.
This Great Western Railway Motor Services poster dates from 1904. It promotes the newly introduced shuttle service between Marlborough and Calne ‘on and from’ October 10th 1904. The poster exlains that the bus service will be calling at Fyfield, Overton, Avebury, Beckhampton and Cherhill. The poster features an image of one of the single decker buses created jointly by tramcar manufacturer G.F. Milnes & Company and automotive pioneer Daimler Motor Company Limited.
Our posters are carefully and professionally created from vintage originals. Whilst great care is taken in the production of these posters, we also try to maintain a vintage feel, so there may be small imperfections, fold marks, scuffs, tears or marks that were part of the original poster master. If these do appear they should be visible on the larger views of the item on this listing. The originals of many of the posters we offer can cost many thousands of pounds, so whilst these posters look great, especially framed and mounted on a wall, they are intended as a fun, affordable reproductionS and not intended fine art prints.
The 50x70cm version has been specially produced to be used in conjunction with Ikea’s 50x70cm Ribba picture frame which currently retails for around £12. So you can bag a bargain of print and poster for just £22.
