A Most unusual and interesting exhibition of railway posters and publicity matter from all parts of the world was recently held in Christchurch. The response to a request for posters, photographs, and tourist literature was so enthusiastic that no less than forty different countries were represented.

A beautiful set of posters, gems of photography, came from Germany, picturing Bavaria, the Harz, Cologne, Wurtemburg, and the storied castles of the Rhine.

France was well represented by some thirty posters, mostly scenic, work of some of the world's best poster artists. Indeed, what many considered to be the most beautiful poster in the exhibition was that of a market scene at Candebec, Normandy, done in pastels.

India's posters, shewing her strange religious festivals and scenes on the famous “Pilgrim Line,” had a great appeal for those who had visited the East or who were interested in the quaint Hindoo rites and customs.

Canada's famous Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway companies, with their luxurious cars; Australia's magnificent new railway station at Adelaide, proved by their pictures that the New World is well to the fore in railway comforts for passengers.

The United States railway companies, always eager to seize any chance for publicity, sent a most comprehensive collection, not the least interesting of which was a set of photographs shewing the historical development of the railway engines used by the Illinois Central Railway. The first engine was built in 1854, and the comparison between this early type with a length of fifty feet and one of their new monster locomotives typified the tremendous strides made in railway transport during the short time of eighty years.

History was made real by the posters coming from the British Isles, probably due to the world wide fame of the artists, as well as to the subjects they chose to draw—Westminster Abbey, The Tower of London, Oxford and Cambridge, all so well known even to those who have never left New Zealand.

The New Zealand Railways contributed a fine collection of photographs showing the construction and development of locomotives on the North Island Main Trunk line, also many photographs of the first engines used in New Zealand, which are now replaced by the new “K” class, Baltic type of engine.

Java, Siam, South America, Norway, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, The Federated Malay States, Africa, Czechoslovakia, Panama, Cuba, Uruguay, and Finland, all sent fascinating photographs or posters shewing various aspects of the social life and customs of their nations.

Yet another source of interest provided at the exhibition, more especially to the boys and girls, was a model railway system with eight trains and 500 feet of track, electric signalling system, and electrically controlled yards.

Arrangements have been made for the collection of posters and photographs to be shewn in various parts of New Zealand, and it will provide people with a unique opportunity of learning something of the development of the railways, as well as of studying the methods of other nations besides our own.

Wanted: A Railway Friend

The undermentioned American Railwaymen, Mr. R. Leibengood, 6110 Michigen Avenue, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.A. (Secretary of the St. Louis Lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen), and Mr. Samuel J. Gordon, Conductor, Box 103, Vanlue, Ohio, U.S.A., would be pleased to correspond with railwaymen in New Zealand.