Helping Royal Mail celebrate the steam age
Posted on 27 October 2010
A new Histories in Action case study reveals how York historian Colin Divall helped the Royal Mail design the Great British Railways stamps.
Always popular with stamp collectors and the general
public, trains and railways are one of the most covered topics on British
commemorative stamps. The twentieth such issue – Great British railways –
appeared in August 2010 with the help of York transport historian
Professor Colin
Divall.
Issued in August 2010, the set of six stamps celebrate
the ‘Big Four’ railway companies, featuring classic British locomotives. The ‘Big
Four’ – London, Midland & Scottish (including the Northern Counties
Committee in Northern Ireland), the London & North Eastern, the Great
Western and the Southern Railways – ran Britain’s railways from 1923 until 1948
when they merged to form British Railways. They also commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the last steam locomotive to be made and used in the UK, British
Rail’s Evening Star, which brought to
an end over 130 years of steam-locomotive building for Britain’s mainline
railways.
