Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the signal box

The dust has hardly settled since Harrogate, but notheless, it’s railway poster time again.  Oh goody.

Coming up in just over a month’s time, another giant auction of picture-perfect railway posters, this time at Bloomsbury Auctions in New York.  And once again, I am trying to be enthusiastic, but not quite managing it.

This one’s quite fun, although mostly because I quite fancy the idea of a holiday in some camping carriages (preferably in the style of the Amstutz on the ‘About Us’ page please).

anonymous camping coaches railway poster

But in the main I can’t even get enthusiastic enough to post them on the blog.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s tons of wonderful and collectable posters there, and I’m sure I’d love to see them on someone else’s walls, a few at a time.  But, just like with Morphets, all of that lovely landscape and pretty pastel colours and sheer niceness ends up overwhelming me, and I don’t want to buy a single one of them.  Not that I could afford it anyway.

Plus there’s a lot of Terence Cuneo, which is always a bit of red flag for me.  Or perhaps I should say signal.  He’s a sign that we have tipped over the border of art and are now firmly in the land of people who like pictures of trains.  Lovely detailed pictures of trains on tracks where you can see what model it is and where it is going.  (We did once accidentally own a Cuneo picture, which was of the ICI Works in Cheshire at night., a picture so uncompromisingly industrial and ugly that it earned my respect.  Although we still sold it.)

But nonetheless, there are lots of people who like buying these kind of posters and paying lots of money for them, so I am sure the sale will do very well.  And the fact that I can’t see this is the number one reason why I’m not a poster dealer and never will be.

One final word: what is truly odd and unique about this sale is the fact that this was one man’s collection and every single one of these 198 posters is framed.  My mind is well and truly boggled.  Where on earth did he (I assume it’s a he) live?  In a hotel?  Or a mental asylum?  How else would he have had enough wall space?  Answers in the comments box please.

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