Great Western Coffee Shop

If you thought train spotting was boring, spare a thought for these two - who spend 10 hours a day cataloguing railway posters.


Enthusiasts Richard and Judy Furness have amassed a collection of around 10,000 pictures, which they dutifully enter into a world-wide database. The couple painstakingly detail the artist, location and year, as well as take a picture of each poster, which they source from across the globe. Their database, managed entirely by them, it thought to be the world's largest collection of railway artwork.

Richard, 68, who has around 200 railway posters on display in his office, started the project when he spotted inaccuracies in national archives. But his obsession became so big he had to give up his full time job as an engineer to allow him enough time to update the database. He now regularly gets information sent from as far afield as New York, Germany and Switzerland.

Richard, from Uley, Gloucestershire, said: "It's a full time job for me, I am a professional engineer, this was a hobby but it has now taken over my life. We are doing 50 hours a week just cataloguing and archiving posters. It's an excellent way to retire. I think it is the largest archive in the world. Nobody has ever done this before, it is the first time someone has detailed exactly how many posters we produced and where they were. When we come up with information that doesn't correlate we do our own research and find out exactly how they were painted. We do 10 hours of work a day on the archive. It's mainly time spent researching. You can almost trace who the artist is and where they were at that time by what posters they were doing. We research it so by the time we are done we can link all the information together and have a more comprehensive picture of it all. We check every single poster from every entry, I think we have about 100,000 waiting and we've only done a tenth of that."

The database, which is being compiled with help from the National Archives in Kew, the National Railway Museum, in York, and the Didcot Railway Trust, Oxon., is not yet available to the public.

The couple, who began compiling the list in 2001, added however they have plans to release it once it is completed.

"I thought a database was long overdue when I noticed many of the artwork archives were not as complete as they should be," the train spotter said. "As nobody has ever done this we are doing it privately and hopefully much of the information will become available to researchers. We get the names and learn about the lives of each of artists, on quite a few occasions we have even met their families."

The oldest poster in the pair's collection dates back to the 1830s and shows a Victorian timetable for a journey to the beach.

The newest is one of Stonehenge, which Richard commissioned last year after he was stunned to discover there was no poster in existence for the tourist attraction.

The couple are able to trace Britain's history through the posters, and have many which detail resort where famous landmarks are yet to be built.

Richard said: "I have pictures of Blackpool without the tower, it's amazing really. You can track the history and the development of Britain through the posters, I have almost opened Pandora's Box."

Incredibly the posters showing Britain's railway history have been found across the world, with the most avid of collectors living in New York.

"I am finding First Great Western posters in Vienna, San Francisco and New York," Richard added. "I think the greatest number of poster collectors are in the USA, there are regular auctions in New York of British Art."

Richard is the author of a series of seven books which publish railways posters from regions across the country, and have included forewords from Michael Palin and Richard Madeley.

Next year an eighth book on railway posters from across Europe is due to be added to the series.

The newest is one of Stonehenge, which Richard commissioned last year after he was stunned to discover there was no poster in existence for the tourist attraction.

This one?

(http://www.terrascope.co.uk/images/stonehengebytrain.jpg)