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All aboard for Scotland

From the earliest days of rail travel, Scotland was seen as an attractive holiday destination. Dr Richard Furness looks at the different ways in which railway companies have tempted visitors to travel to Scotland by train
Scotland is one of the most beautiful countries on the planet, and attracts visitors from across the world. Over the years, Scots have settled in many countries, and Scottish culture is instantly recognised around the globe. Posters can show both a country and its culture in pictures, and during the development of the railways in Scotland during Victorian times and since, posters have played a leading role in promoting tourism and economic development. Railway companies vied for the custom of passengers, using a variety of attractive images of Scotland to entice travellers to travel with them, and these posters have changed and developed over the years.
Take the three posters below, from the 1920s. When shown individually, nobody can mistake the country portrayed; put them together and this trio shouts Scotland. The words actually detract from the images.
When trying to promote an area, a country or an industry, the poster became a core method of marketing; visual images were the main way to communicate with potential passengers. The railways extended this concept to attract passengers and freight. Today we have the internet, telesales, Twitter, Facebook and other 21st century tools: all have by-passed the simple poster. Electronic speed has replaced visual stimulation.
The earliest Scottish posters were informative and not very pictorial, but as lithography developed and Scotland industrialised in late Victorian times, these two separate but related factors drove poster development rapidly from around 1900. The railway companies used colour to illustrate their services and this first trio of images show the changes in style and content from 1897 to 1907. This decade saw a blizzard of colour images appear at Scottish railway stations.



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