Collection: Railway & Trains

The London Underground commissioned more good graphic design than any private gallery. Posters made when train travel was the modern way to move a country, when the LNER, the LMS, and the GWR competed for British holidaymakers. The railway poster era ran from the 1900s through the 1960s, when illustration sold a journey better than photography could.

The collection spans the great schools and the great routes. The London Underground campaigns commissioned by Frank Pick, who turned a transport network into a design brief. Edward McKnight Kauffer's modernist work for the Underground. Tom Purvis for the LNER, Frank Newbould for the LMS, Terence Cuneo for British Rail. The PLM and SNCF in France. The Swiss Federal Railways posters of Herbert Matter and Emil Cardinaux. American railroad posters from the Union Pacific, Santa Fe, and Canadian Pacific eras. The Flying Scotsman, the Royal Scotsman, the Orient Express, named trains that became destinations themselves.

These were station-wall posters, replaced as the seasons changed. Most were pasted over within months. The ones that survived are the design record of an era when going somewhere was an event.

Available in seven sizes, A4 through A0.

- Try it on your wall before you buy. Every poster supports our See It On Your Wall preview tool.
- Printed locally for the UK, US, and Canada.
- 200gsm archival paper, pigment-based inks.