On fast track to a dream

His journey to the Yorkshire coast was at the behest of the London & North Eastern Railway, though why the company chose the migr Soviet citizen to illustrate a scene in one of its most popular destinations remains a mystery.

The result was unconventional, reflecting Gorbatoff the post-impressionist. He painted the South Bay and castle from a path beneath the Esplanade, and maybe for the only time in its history transported Scarborough from the grey North Sea to the blue Mediterranean.

This touch of Vincent Van Gogh on station platforms was part of the marketing of train journeys in the mid-1930s and the LNER was visionary in the way it trumpeted its extensive network. At one time it had 6,590 route miles and 70,000 billboard spaces to fill.

The tone was set by William Teasdale, the company's chief publicity officer who believed in images that were big, bold and distinctive. He and his successor developed a superteam of artists superior to that of their rival, LMS, who had recruited Royal Academicians.

Teasdale promoted not only the seaside, history and landscapes but the industries which helped to boost the LNER's income from freight. Some of its finest posters acknowledged regional coal-mining,

iron and steel, shipping, chemicals, wool and fishing.

"Teasdale expected his artistic team to glamourise any subject he thought appropriate to the well-being and best image of the railway," argues Dr Richard Furness, an engineer with a particular interest in the selling of rail travel. His eight planned volumes on the subject are based on the poster collection and information archive at the National Railway Museum in York.

That city alone accounts for 31 of the 389 posters in the latest edition dedicated to Yorkshire and the North East and covering most of the 20th century. Yorkshire's output was the largest of any county, and comrade Gorbatoff wasn't the only unlikely contributor.

Dramatic personal journeys drew artists to the railway poster project.

Mario Armengol, a Catalan who fled Franco's repressions after the Spanish Civil War, was commissioned by British Railways to capture the tranquillity of rural Northumberland and the Yorkshire coast.

Ludwig Holhwein, one of Europe's leading designers and painters, was hired by the LNER. On his return to Germany he helped to shape the visual propaganda of the Third Reich.

Fortunino Matania, an Italian war artist also noted for voluptuous nudes, kept women in their bathing costumes for his acclaimed posters promoting holidays in Southport. American and Canadian artists also made their contribution.

Someone known only as Schabelsky – an artist so elusive now there's almost nothing about him or her in the reference books – came up with a series in the 1920s and 30s urging rail travellers to ramble in the Dales and Moors and visit Ripon.

There were the Zinkeisen sisters, Doris and Anna, whose father's family was from Bohemia. Between them they created striking posters of Harrogate, Whitby and Scarborough, and mainline stations on the route of the Flying Scotsman. Ever original, Doris – who was also a society painter and stage and costume designer – shunned the Minster and York's familiar street scenes. For her image of the city she focused on Dick Turpin, making the point that it was easier to take the train there than go by horseback.

Laurence Fish's scenes included Redcar. In keeping with the tradition of many railway posters to idealise places and suspend reality, Fish created a glamorous seorita waiting at the end of the line. So skilled was his draughtsmanship that during the Second World War he was recruited by MI5 to make drawings of the mechanisms of explosive devices. Then it was back to the seaside and "Life is Gay at Whitley Bay". It carried a different message in those days.

Not all the artists had colourful backgrounds. Frank Mason, the son of a railway clerk, studied at Scarborough School of Art, and no-one was more prolific in bringing Yorkshire's contrasts to the attention of the travelling public. From steel-making at Middlesbrough to fishing scenes, from Saltburn to Bridlington (in 1958 "Yorkshire's gay seaside playground"), Hull and Withernsea, the Humber estuary, Richmond and Fountains Abbey, he put them all on posters.

Bradford-born Frank Newbould became one of the Big Five railway artists, and Kenneth Steel was a favourite of British Railways, not least because he was from Sheffield, had the ideal surname and knew better than most how to illustrate blast furnaces at a time when BR was marketing its services to industry.

Almost every page of this book is a vibrant tribute to commercial art, and a mixture of fantasy and clues to how much has changed socially. The emphasis is not on the railway as such but where it went. Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield were largely neglected in posters because they were the places passengers were escaping for the countryside and coastline.

In the 1920s and 30s Scarborough was portrayed as fun, elegant and romantic, where even the tunny fleet was made to resemble cruise ships rather than fishing boats. Away from the beach, poster man wore blazers and flannels and his slender lady was either chic casual or dressed for dinner. Often a cigarette reinforced the resort's "rich socialite reputation". These images are the opposite of what you find on the saucy seaside postcard. You'll look in vain for a Kiss Me Quick hat, the overweight, bawdy and the excesses of a hen party or lads on the town.

On page 116 is a poster Furness describes as "an absolute stunner" and for him one of the top five railway posters of the 20th century. It was painted for the LNER in 1935 by W Smithson Broadhead and depicts a middle-class couple pausing on a shaded path above the Spa. You imagine a line of dialogue from Noel Coward passes between them.

The message is clear: life can be like this for you too if you travel by train to Scarborough.

Naturally the sky is blue, as it is on virtually every other page. But definitely not on page 63.

The railway company had a vested interest in filling its poster with a broad black stripe in promoting part of its network for a special event on June 29, 1927.

Stations in Wensleydale, and at Masham and Pateley Bridge, Northallerton, Stokesley and throughout Teesside were ideal points to see a total solar eclipse. "Your only chance until 1999" warned the the London & North Eastern Railway.

By next day everything was back to normal. The sun was shining again on its trains and all the places where they called.

Poster to Poster: Railway Journeys in Art Vol. 2 Yorkshire & the North East, Richard Furness 35 Published by JDF & Associates Ltd, Rydal Water, The Old Pitch, Tirley, Gloucestershire GL19 4ET.

Details of the National Railway Museum's poster archive at www.nrm.org.uk

YP MAG 24/7/10