What years does this poster cover.

[hoovered]

Hi all,

 

 

I have seen this railway poster on sale on EBay, any ideas what year it covers as I would like to model a Paddington to Fishguard train from the late 50's to early 60's , and it looks right to me.

I know the loco from Paddington would probably be a Castle , with a change at Cardiff to a Hall ?

Anyone have any ideas on the coach formation ?, I notice it say's motor cars conveyed.

Thanks.

 

[The Stationmaster]

Spot on for period for you.

[bécasse]

The poster is a bit of a puzzle in some respects because the ship at the quay is unquestionably the St.Patrick. 

 

Now the St.Patrick was built by the GWR for service on the Fishguard-Rosslare route and was actually owned by the Fishguard & Rosslare Railways & Harbours Co. (a joint GWR-CIE company), but by the time she was delivered British Railways had come into being and she was immediately commandeered to serve the Channel Islands routes, technically on charter until ownership was transferred to BR (Southern) in 1959. Indeed, I travelled on her from Torquay to St.Peter Port and back in the summer of 1958. In 1964, she was transferred to Southampton to, in effect, close the various western Channel routes from that port, and then in 1965 to the Short Sea routes.

 

She did work briefly between Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire in both 1950 and 1951 but I have seen no record of her actually working from Fishguard, and if she had, it would have been to replace the St.David, her almost identical sister, which can be seen in the background of the poster riding out in Goodwick Bay and which spent just about all of her railway career at Fishguard. Unlike Holyhead, there were no significant overhaul facilities at Fishguard, so she is unlikely to have ever been there for survey purposes and, until the drive-on/drive-off car ferries appeared, there was no real need for a new ship to visit each port to check its "fit", although she may well have called in briefly when en route from Cammell Laird's yard at Birkenhead to Weymouth in January 1948 - although that would have been a decade before the "date" of the poster which depicts BR Mk I stock in the post-1956 WR "principal trains" livery (note, incidentally, the comparatively rare BSO). Minor, but obvious, alterations were made to the St.Patrick during winter 1960/61, and she is depicted in the poster in her condition prior to this date.

 

So the poster probably dates from between 1957 and 1960 - at which period the "motor cars conveyed" would have been loaded and unloaded by crane at both Fishguard and Rosslare - and indeed conveyed on rail wagons between the mainland and pier at Rosslare!

[PatB]

I wonder if some artistic licence may have been used regarding the location of a particular ship.

 

However, other dating features are what appears to be WR chocolate and cream coach livery and what, although my screen is small and my eyes not what they were, I think is a Farina styled Austin Westminster in the foreground. IIRC  the BMC Farinas appeared in 1959.

[TheSignalEngineer]

According to the BBC it was painted in 1960

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/fishguard-harbour-wales-9621

[bécasse]

I wonder if some artistic licence may have been used regarding the location of a particular ship.

 

 

Obviously I wondered that too, but every detail that is visible marks the ship out as being the St.Patrick. She was almost identical to the Fishguard long term resident, the St.David which can be seen in the background, and it would have taken a very knowledgable artist to get those tiny details right for an artistic licence interpretation.

 

In 1960, and indeed right through from 1932 until 1967, other than the war years, the other Rosslare ship on the Fishguard station was the St.Andrew, but she was very different in appearance and cannot possibly have been either of the ships depicted in the poster. She was obviously getting a little long in the tooth by 1960, and with the concentration of the Channel Islands services on Weymouth and the delivery of two new ships there in 1960/61, it may be that the Western Region had hopes that the St.Patrick might return to her "spiritual" home at Fishguard to replace the St.Andrew and enable the service to be worked by two almost identical vessels. This would have been wishful thinking, though, for the St.Patrick was retained (and indeed refurbished in 1961) for the Channel Islands route until 1963 when the need for further economies there led to its release, albeit for services elsewhere in the Channel and not at Fishguard.

 

Incidentally, from 1950 the WR were only responsible for the publicity for the Fishguard routes, other responsibilities being transferred to a new Irish Ferry Services organisation, nominally part of the LMR and based at Euston House.

 

The St.Andrew soldiered on at Fishguard until the end of 1966, when she was replaced by the Duke of Rothesay, which had been transferred, after conversion to carry cars, from the Heysham-Belfast route.

[hoovered]

Thanks for the replys,

 

I first trevelled on this route in july 1958 , it was the night ferry on the 25th , my 10th Birthday was the following day !. we went every year till 1964 when work intervened.

 

I think we changed trains at Cardiff around 10pm.

 

I would like to do this service on my OO layout, but can't find anything on the make up of the train, as I said I think it would have been a Castle from Paddington then a Hall perhaps fron Cardiff to Fishguard, would the carrages have been Mk1 's in Chocolate and Cream as in the painting or in Maroon , or would it have been older stock,  Or should I just run what I like / have  as it is my Railway .

 

This prin can be bought in A1- A4 size on EBay.

[it's-er]

That is a superb poster you have lighted on, Hoover - the detail in it is terrific. And what fantastic detective work from everyone replying above - it is fascinating to read all these contributions.

 

John

[Catweasel]

I would agree with PatB. The car is a stylized Austin Westminster. Therefore the poster would current from around 1960.

[Derekl]

You can print and/or save a copy off the BBC link above: not great, but that may be my printer being a bit short on some of the ink. (Non commercial use only).

 

Lovely poster, as are so many of the BR and earlier material. It is artwork, though, and not impossible that the artists were given a pic of the harbour (or even went to look at it) and were given a pic of the ship to work from, nobody paying a great deal of attention to whether it was the one to be used on the service.

 

Totally off-topic, I did the crossing in 1980/81 (presumably on Earl of Rothesay) in nasty weather. My then girl friend and I were invited onto the bridge (well, she was, I got to tag along). We were shown the radar - useless, we were told (well, she was, but I was listening), since it all it shows is the wave tops - it was a sort of snow screen. Told they had to be careful as they were running across the north-south merchant traffic in the Irish Sea (and they don't look, it was said - I can only report what was told).

 

Looking at the screen carefully, I asked what the big blob was on the top left. Cue lots of people to left of bridge with binoculars, and we changed course.

[bécasse]

 

Totally off-topic, I did the crossing in 1980/81 (presumably on Earl of Rothesay) in nasty weather. My then girl friend and I were invited onto the bridge (well, she was, I got to tag along). We were shown the radar - useless, we were told (well, she was, but I was listening), since it all it shows is the wave tops - it was a sort of snow screen. Told they had to be careful as they were running across the north-south merchant traffic in the Irish Sea (and they don't look, it was said - I can only report what was told).

 

Looking at the screen carefully, I asked what the big blob was on the top left. Cue lots of people to left of bridge with binoculars, and we changed course.

 

I travelled Fishguard-Rosslare and return a number of times through the 1970s, often in atrocious weather, and variously on the Duke of Rothesay​, Caledonian Princess and Stena Normannica, the last on charter from Stena Line. I always crossed at least partway on the bridge (on duty I might add), and certainly never noticed any shortcomings in the radar output, although I will accept that it could be "greyed" by wave peaks, whereas a visual lookout for any distance was indeed difficult with the vessel pitching badly fore and aft. If you crossed in 1980 or later, you probably travelled on the new St.David where the bridge was higher and both visual and radar look out should have been better.

 

Bridge deck crew were well known for their wry humour when conversing with less knowledgable passengers. My own personal best experience in that respect was when crossing from Folkestone to Boulogne one day with a full compliment of 1400 passengers on board and in such appalling weather conditions that, frankly, the Master should never have set sail. Some seven hours out from Folkestone and with seas breaking right over the ship, the Master announced to all and sundry that he had radioed for assistance. He actually meant that he had asked for a tug to help us into Boulogne, but that wasn't how it was interpreted by the majority of passengers; fortunately most were too ill to panic. It was the only time that I ever saw crew members being seasick!

[The Stationmaster]

I would suggest that the ship bears a very strong resemblance to the St David which was in use on the Fishguard-Rosslare route at that time.  The rake of the funnel is more like that of the St David that the St Patrick and the main mast bears a far greater similarlity to the St Davids than it does to the St Patrick.  As the St David spent many years on the Fishguard - Rosslare route it seems quite logical that it should be 'her' in the poster.

[bécasse]

With regard to trains connecting with Rosslare boats at Fishguard, I can only give background information for the 1970s when I had some responsibility for specifying what was required.

 

Certainly by this time (and I suspect earlier), the problem was that all the Irish routes were subject to significant traffic peaks and troughs, and this was even more accentuated on the Fishguard-Rosslare route whose Irish hinterland was sparsely populated. This made it almost impossible to schedule any sort of regular train connection as on some days even a single short train would represent gross over provision whereas on others it was insufficient.

 

Thus on some days, at least in summer, there would be a dedicated through train from London Paddington which might or might not by-pass Swansea, while on others a regular London-Swansea train would be extended in whole or in part to Fishguard. On other days, quite commonly in winter, there would only be a connection, probably a dmu, from Swansea. On the busiest days there might also be a train just from Cardiff (which might have started back from Bristol) via Swansea. All this was a nightmare to publicise and inevitably neither public nor working TTs told the whole story. Indeed, there were occasions when Control decisions on the day's working were taken after the London train had left Paddington. I remember travelling one morning when I (and the train's driver) were expecting to go in and out of Swansea which was advertised as a "pick up only" stop. However, after a stop for instructions at the relevant signal, the train was routed direct via the Swansea District Lines and the driver change took place at Llanelli (instead of with the reversal at Swansea as booked).

[bécasse]

I would suggest that the ship bears a very strong resemblance to the St David which was in use on the Fishguard-Rosslare route at that time.  The rake of the funnel is more like that of the St David that the St Patrick and the main mast bears a far greater similarlity to the St Davids than it does to the St Patrick.  As the St David spent many years on the Fishguard - Rosslare route it seems quite logical that it should be 'her' in the poster.

Sorry, Mike, this is one place where I know better than you - she is absolutely definitely the St.Patrick. The saloon window arrangement was notably different from her sibling and is very obvious in the poster, furthermore the ship in the background can only be the other sibling, so both are depicted and I really doubt whether the two boats were ever at Fishguard at the same time. When the St.Patrick was new in 1948 and might have called in at Fishguard en route from Cammell Laird's to Weymouth, St.David was temporarily covering the Channel Islands routes waiting to be relieved by her new sibling - so they almost certainly met at Weymouth but never at Fishguard.

 

Incidentally, apart from minor details such as those windows, they were true siblings built to the same naval architect drawings and so the funnel rake was identical on both. 

[The Stationmaster]

Sorry, Mike, this is one place where I know better than you - she is absolutely definitely the St.Patrick. The saloon window arrangement was notably different from her sibling and is very obvious in the poster, furthermore the ship in the background can only be the other sibling, so both are depicted and I really doubt whether the two boats were ever at Fishguard at the same time. When the St.Patrick was new in 1948 and might have called in at Fishguard en route from Cammell Laird's to Weymouth, St.David was temporarily covering the Channel Islands routes waiting to be relieved by her new sibling - so they almost certainly met at Weymouth but never at Fishguard.

 

Incidentally, apart from minor details such as those windows, they were true siblings built to the same naval architect drawings and so the funnel rake was identical on both. 

I agree regarding the shelter deck windosw but interestingly according to contemporaneious views the rake of the funnels differed between the two and the funnel on that picture looks more like the rake of that on the St David.  Interestingly at about the same time another picture was painted by the same artist which featured the St David at Fishguard.  So I wonder if Wilkinson did a little bit of inmagineering and used some photos to create a second vessel at Fishguard?

[bécasse]

So that others can see what we are talking about, here are (rather poor) postcard views of the St.Patrick and the St.David in more or less the condition they would have been in c1960:

The differences in the saloon windows on the upper deck can be seen clearly, and compared with their depiction in the poster. It will also be noted that three windows on the deck below, but further aft, were larger, and these three are also accurately depicted even though they are behind a crane.

 

I agree that Wilkinson is most unlikely to have seen the St.Patrick at the quayside (I would actually have said impossible - and certainly have seen no record that she visited Fishguard at this period) and that he must have produced working sketches of the St.David at the quayside and then worked them up with the details of the St.Patrick for the painting which forms the basis of the poster.

 

The question then is did this happen by accident, which I consider unlikely given that the St.Patrick was permanently allocated to another Region's shipping services, or by design? Clearly, Wilkinson was given access to either the St.Patrick herself or to very clear photographs of her at the appropriate angle, as otherwise he would not have been able to paint her so accurately, and either would have needed official backing. My strong suspicions are that this was another example of the Paddington publicity machine of the era doing its best to claim for the Great Western that it which it believed was rightfully their's - remember this was the era of the return of chocolate and cream coaching stock on express trains, and there were even a few, very few, locomotives that somehow managed to retain their G W R insignia long after they should have acquired BR emblems.

 

Sadly, I can't think of anyone who might have been "in the know" and who isn't long deceased. Even Jim Hannah, who, canny Scot that he was, might just have known from hearsay, has left us this year.

[Andy Kirkham]

I'm having some trouble identifying the locomotive partially seen to the right of the image.

[bluebottle]

The poster is a bit of a puzzle in some respects because the ship at the quay is unquestionably the St.Patrick. 

Now the St.Patrick was built by the GWR . . . . . . . .

 

But how did they get it all the way from Swindon to Fishguard?

[bécasse]

Hmm! Rather less to go on than with the ship but my inclination would be to favour a 51XX of which there were a few in the general area, although I don't think Fishguard & Goodwick shed itself ever had any allocated.

[bécasse]

Actually, another odd feature of the poster which I doubt reflects reality is the presence of two trains composed of chocolate-and-cream Mk I stock. I presume that the train in front is meant to be in the process of departing, either full of passengers or to be serviced (IIRC carriages were serviced at Goodwick but I have to admit to not being certain of that 40 years later).

 

The St.David had a passenger certificate for 1300 and could carry 40 cars, so on its busiest crossings would carry around 1150-1200 train passengers and 100-150 motorists. So there would never be a requirement to run more than two connecting trains and the service was always arranged in such a way that trains carrying passengers arriving from Ireland were dispatched before the trains carrying passengers to Ireland were allowed into the station (if there were shipping delays, control would arrange for the arriving trains to be held back short of Fishguard itself). Thus there would never be passenger train arrivals and departures in the station at the same time. There was never more than one train to/from London, which would be a dedicated boat train on the busiest dates and the prolongation of a Cardiff or Swansea trains on others, and the other train would usually have come from Bristol or Cardiff making calls through South Wales which would be omitted by a dedicated London boat train. (A dedicated London boat train would typically serve Reading, Swindon, Newport, Cardiff and Llanelly.)

 

Chocolate-and-cream Mk I stock was a relative rarity, intended only for use in WR principal express trains which would have included the London-Fishguard train (whether it was a dedicated boat train or the prolongation of a South Wales service), indeed I have vague memories of having seen such a suitably "roof"-boarded train at Paddington in my train spotting days. However, the second, Bristol/Cardiff, train would not have qualified for chocolate-and-cream stock, and would have been formed (in 1960) of a mixture of maroon and crimson-and-cream stock of both BR and GWR (and even possibly LMS) origin - a typical hotchpot WR train of the period, which might, in fact, have included an odd spare chocolate-and-cream vehicle but certainly wouldn't be fully formed of them.

 

So this is another piece of pro-GWR "artistic licence", particularly as the chocolate-and-cream carriages depicted should have clearly visible BR roundels of the period, and they haven't.

[PatB]

But how did they get it all the way from Swindon to Fishguard?

 

By rail as an oversized load of course. Bet it took a bit of grunt to drag them through the Severn Tunnel though .

[PhilJ W]

I thought that they were Mk. 1 Pullmans.

[Chimer]

I don't think I'm more than averagely cynical, but am surprised that lots of you seem to expect an advertising poster to depict reality!  And that nobody's pointed out that the angle of the cliff face framing the scene on the left is wrong (possibly) ...

[The Stationmaster]

I don't think I'm more than averagely cynical, but am surprised that lots of you seem to expect an advertising poster to depict reality!  And that nobody's pointed out that the angle of the cliff face framing the scene on the left is wrong (possibly) ...

Or that the viewpoint doesn't actually exist as there is a cliff just there immediately opposite the platform canopies - the artist has 'bent' the angle of view to improve the composition.

[bécasse]

It isn't that one expects an advertising poster to depict reality, after all it wasn't uncommon to find depictions from impossible viewpoints (as here) or scenes that ignored the odd nasty. Indeed, I find the first completely legitimate and the second reasonable (as long as it wasn't, say, a steelworks that was omitted from the view).

 

The issue here is that the painter has gone to great trouble, at least in the case of the ship, to depict something that wasn't real - after all, he could have depicted the almost identical St.David at the quay and the rather different (but not obviously so in a distant view) St.Andrew riding out in Goodwick Bay and that would have been real, and 99.9999% of people viewing the poster would have taken exactly the same message out of it. Likewise with the coaching stock, the vehicles depicted are accurate (and I have already commented on the depiction of the rare BSO which could well have been formed into the London boat train) but the livery has been deliberately "adjusted".

 

So the poster contains a hidden message. Depicting the wrong ship would have entailed more work for the artist who would have had to travel to another location (Weymouth or Torquay) to make the necessary sketches, so it is most unlikely that he did so of his own accord, and he must, therefore, have been commissioned to depict things in the way that they are shown.

 

Intriguingly, the BTC HQ at Marylebone (aka "The Kremlin") was already monitoring regional publicity material by this date in an effort to stop it going "off-message", and this poster would unquestionably have required such clearance because the service was managed by the LMR-based Irish Ferry Services organisation and not by Paddington. Someone there must have congratulated themselves that they "got away with it"! I seem to recollect that the rivalries generated could not always be described as "friendly".