Railwayana is BIG business Geoff Courtney summarises the current railwayana market which, after seven decades, has become big business ... but still retains its early appeal even as collecting trends have changed.
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eventy years ago, railwayana collecting was for the few, an esoteric hobby that attracted minimal interest. By the early 1960s it had grown but was still in its infancy, and even a decade later it was only just entering adolescence. In the 1980s it was reaching maturity... and with that came specialist railwayana auction houses, and an appeal that stretched beyond our shores. Today it is a multi-million pound business which, doubtless to the surprise of many of its adherents, has boomed during the Covid-19
pandemic, to the extent that there is now a bewildering array of auctions and collections coming onto the market in a seemingly neverending wave. From the very beginning the focal point of collecting was nameplates, and BR’s Western Region was the first on the scene, selling nameplates out of Swindon for £2 whatever class they came from. But in the mid-1960s this was increased in one step to £15 due to their popularity.
