CATEGORIES
 

WHAT TO COLLECT?

BUYING

REPLICAS AND FORGERIES

RESTORATION

Railwayana can be divided into a number of different categories. I have included pages on the following:-

What to collect?

This might sound a silly question because generally people collect what they are interested in.  Having said that, there are a number of practical considerations before starting a collection e.g. availability (does the material I am seeking exist or ever come up for sale?), cost and convenience of handling, and storage. Loco nameplates, while being the desired area for many people, do badly under several headings. Some nameplates are huge and very heavy. Other things being equal, it is easier to make a large casting than a small casting, and as steam loco engineering was fairly agricultural and weight was not a major issue, anything to do with railways and steam locomotives is usually heavy. They used to say that the lightest thing on the railway was the pay packet!  Equally, many nameplates may never become available, being in public hands or cherished by a private collector.  However, the lure of nameplates remains irresistible for many.

Buying

The main market for buying and selling is through the specialist auctions, although a considerable amount changes hands privately between collectors. You will not pick up many bargains at auctions (although surprises do occur) but you do get some assurance that what you are buying is genuine, as the main auctioneers are wise to replicas and fakes, and the number of people who inspect each artifact before the sale also gives comfort. Most collectors in the railwayana market are enthusiasts. There is relatively little buying purely for resale, which means that surprises can occur when two bidders want the same item - it only takes two people to drive the price up.

Obviously, it helps to be patient in collecting, and, quite honestly, adds to the fun, the thrill of the chase and so on. Most collectors' views on what is desirable change over time, and while at the time you buy that first "big ticket" item you cannot dream of ever selling it, in a few years' time, you may well find the temptation to realise cash, to plough into something that has become more desirable, too compelling.

Because of the specialist auctions, there is a surprisingly liquid market in most artifacts. You probably won't get rich dealing in railwayana, and the days when you could buy a nameplate from British Railways for 30/- including delivery, are long since gone. I However, as noted above, most collectors are in it because they enjoy collecting, the investing side is secondary.

Replicas and Forgeries

Due to the high cost of the genuine article, over the years a number of entrepreneurs have produced, openly, replica artifacts such as nameplates. These are generally marked as such but an unscrupulous vendor may make efforts to obliterate such marks.  John Mander used to publish a guide to replicas and forgeries but this may now be out of print. As a general tip, seek advice when you are starting off or entering a new section of the market. It can be difficult to tell the provenance of cast iron or aluminium, but reproduction brass items are generally easier to detect. 

Replicas of numberplates, worksplates, shedcodes, station totems, seats and signs also appear. Loco shedcode plates are frequently replicas and caution is recommended before parting with large amounts of cash.  Smokebox numberplates also attract the forgers' attention and you could be seriously out of pocket if you buy a wrong 'un.  Smokebox numberplates were replaced in service from time to time so the existence of two apparently genuine plates could happen but would put some people off.   Brass plates e.g. cabside numberplates and worksplates, are more difficult to pass off as genuine, due to the patina and the knocks that the softer metal tended to pick up in service.

Below is an example of something that is more of a novelty than a fake or a replica (photo published on eBay from some hopeful trying to sell it).  Apart from the anachronistic 1865 date (the LMS existed between 1923 and 1948), it just doesn't look right for such an apparently old item, either in style or condition.

Restoration

LNWR Beware of the Trains sign under restoration. As this is a relatively common sign, I had no qualms about restoration. 

To restore or not to restore, that is the question. Some owners have wiped off considerable value from the artifact by over zealous or insensitive restoration. A number of mainline plates were "skimmed" in a milling machine prior to sale buy BR, or even after. This is a dreadful thing to do and probably knocks half the value off the plate.

A notorious example of interference was a Great Western "King" class plate, which had the bottom half of the steel backplate cut off. At the time, no other King nameplate had ever appeared in auction and the price would probably have then been in the range £15-20,000. This plate failed to sell for one third of that. 

Aluminium is particularly problematic when it comes to restoration. Restored aluminium plates e.g. headboards and plates off diesel classes, tend to look like fakes.

Other things being equal, an unrestored artifact (ex-loco, ex-lineside, to use the jargon) is likely to be more valuable than a restored example. However, few collectors would display an unrestored plate/sign. They probably meet enough disapproval from other members of the family in suggesting they hang their favourite plate over the mantelpiece, which might just be tolerated if it is nicely painted and polished, but covered in oil and coal dust, it will definitely be banished to the garden shed.

Loco plate collectors generally therefore like a restored front, and an unrestored back - although you will usually want to clean the back as the plates are filthy when they come off the locomotive. Bear in mind also that the appearance of a plate that has been off a locomotive for 40 years or more is hardly in a state representative of how it was in everyday service. Most collectors would draw the line at skimming or machining the plate to achieve a perfectly flat finish and take out the knocks. They never looked like that "in real life" so why do it?

Worksplates from a Chinese JF 2-8-2. While I am generally in favour of keeping things ex-loco, the lower plate illustrates the condition in which they can come off the loco.