Gloucester Warwickshire Steam Railway hosted its very first Railwayana Valuation Day on Sunday, the 1st of October at Lifford Hall in the stunning Cotswold village of Broadway.
The event was held in collaboration with Evesham-based railway auctioneer GW Railwayana Auctions and the Broadway Museum & Art Gallery which is currently hosting the Gloucester Warwickshire Steam Railways ‘Journey through Steam' exhibit.
The valuation day even saw art curator and antique expert Paul Atterbury from BBC's Antiques Roadshow provide valuations to attendees alongside other experts.
Over 150 Railwayana owners attended the special day with an array of fascinating items, including:
- Locomotive name and number plates
- Station signs
- Plans
- Railway watches
- Lamps
- Signalling equipment
Simon Turner, of GW Railwayana Auctions (GWRA) said:
“It was great fun to be involved in this day and there were some surprises. For example, an LMS ‘Jubilee' nameplate appeared which had been purchased for just £15 from British Railways in the early 1960s. It was as it came off the locomotive and could fetch as much as £8,000 if it were auctioned.”
“Similarly, there was a GWR Hall nameplate complete with its cabside number, which together could potentially fetch a five-figure sum.”
“I would guess that some £60,000 worth of railway artefacts passed through the hall that day.”
Simon also mentioned one of the most incredible items was a small cast brass GWR plate which he had not seen in almost 30 years in his career as an auctioneer and went on to say that alongside other experts “it was probably off a Great Western Railway travelling safe.”
The Railwayana Valuation Day was the impressive idea of Mike Dodd who is a railway historian from the Restoration & Archiving Trust in Toddington and organised by Anona van Lawick of the Broadway Museum & Art Gallery alongside Catherine Johnson, marketing manager at the Gloucester Warwickshire Steam Railway.
Anona van Lawick said:
“I think everyone really enjoyed the day – it's remarkable what people have on display in their homes or hidden in lofts, cupboards or even under the bed.”
“Talking of which, one of the most fascinating items for me was a highly detailed survey of the Honeybourne to Cheltenham railway – on which part of the GWSR runs today. The owner's father, who apparently once worked for British Rail, kept it under his bed! I was particularly interested to see the astonishing detail of Broadway Station as it once was.”
Dated 1907, the fascinating survey offered precise mapping of stations, bridges, culverts, siding and junctions with annotations made throughout its working life up to the sale of parcels of land in the 1960s and 1970s by British Rail. Simon Turner believed that this incredible item could well sell for the high hundreds at auction.
Catherine Johnson revealed that an SR-style train headboard featuring ‘Hogwarts Express' was her favourite item and said:
“When Warner Brothers were promoting the new Harry Potter films, they used rebuilt SR West Country Pacific ‘Taw Valley' which was painted red for the occasion and it carried this headboard. But the use of the engine was short-lived as they thought it looked ‘too modern', so they famously used a Great Western ‘Hall' class locomotive instead!”
“You never know how days like this will turn out or what will appear. I loved every minute of it and chatting to the interesting people who came along, some of whom said they found items in skips or picked them up for next to nothing at car boot sales. It was a fun event and we are already talking about staging it again in a couple of years,”.
Poor old Taw Valley. Painted red by the film-makers, purple by the SVR for the Jubilee, then black by the SVR. One day soon it weill be painted correctly in green. Then I might visit the SVR again.
Railwayana and any other items at any auction are only worth what people are prepared to pay..
For example a Plymouth station sign sold in a Scottish Auction would not reach anywhere near the value of that if it was sold in a west country Auction.