THE
HISTORY OF THE RAILWAY PHILATELIC GROUP
THE
BEGINNING
The circumstances surrounding the Group’s formation were
curious. In a certain house in Rotherham the journal of the
TPO and Seapost Society was produced by Norman Hill, doyen
of the travelling post offices, using a Gestetner
duplicating machine. The text and diagrams had to be typed
onto a ‘skin’ and this in turn was used to produce the
required number of copies with the use of the machine. The
snag with this system was that after having produced 260
copies the skin was worn out. The consequence was that the
number of members of the TPO & Seapost Society was
limited to 260 and there was a long waiting list. The
conditions were, therefore, ripe for the founding of a new
society catering for TPO enthusiasts who were unable to
join the existing society. The new society was the Railway
Philatelic Group.
Volume 1, No 1 of ‘Railway Philately’, the journal of the
Railway Philatelic Group, was launched in 1966 to an
unsuspecting world. The journal was of high quality and
printed on 7”x 9” glossy paper. This format lasted from
1966 until September 1974.
The founder of the new Group was Roger Kirk who was still a
member up to his death in 2005. Roger and the other members
of the Committee wisely realised that there was more to
Railway Philately than TPOs and the first edition of the
Journal, Railway Philately, contained articles on
THEMATIC STAMPS, RAILWAY LETTER
STAMPS, PERFINS, etc, as well
as the inevitable TPOs. The Committee Members in those
far off days were S R Turner (President), R L Cantwell
(Chairman), R Kirk (Secretary and Journal Editor), J
Eaton (Treasurer and Exchange Packet Secretary), A
Johnson (Librarian), J Smith, M J Burrows, D Burton
(Committee Members). The annual subscription was 21/-
(£1.05) which in real terms was probably more than it is
today.
Many people have asked why we are a group and not a
society. The expectations of the early members were modest
and they probably envisaged a smallish membership although
a limit was never considered. However the Group grew
quickly at first, both in the number of members and in the
range of activities which it embraced. By the Spring of
1967 the name of R P Cornish appeared on the mast head of
the journal as Editor of the Thematic List, a publication
which attempted to list all the stamps showing trains and
railways. The following issue saw two more names added.
Cliff Hall was the Postal Auctioneer and F N Green the
Business Manager. Presumably the job of the latter was to
solicit advertisements from Philatelic Dealers which were a
prominent feature of the early journals. As membership grew
it became necessary to appoint a Membership Secretary and
Alan Violet was appointed to this post in 1969.
GROWTH,
CHANGE AND THE FUTURE
For many years, an important activity of the Group has been
the Annual Convention and
AGM. The first Convention,
held on 25 October 1969 at Loughborough, attracted 25%
of the UK membership of that time. It was held in a
village hall and was generally deemed to have been a
success. A special one-day Post Office hand stamp was
produced to commemorate the event, the first of many to
be used in subsequent years. The formula of having a
one-day event in a school or church hall was followed
for many years until the Convention was held in the
rather more elegant surroundings of the Royal Station
Hotel, Newcastle. However, it was not until our Fortieth
Anniversary in 2006 that the mould was really broken
when we held a residential weekend Convention and AGM at
Liverpool University. In 2008 a second, successful,
weekend Convention was held in Glasgow and there will be
a Weekend Convention in 2010 at
Newcastle on the weekend
of Fri-Sun
11-13 JUNE 2010.
Today the Group numbers some 400 members at home and
abroad. The aims of the Group remain much as they were more
than 40 years ago but circumstances are different.
The Postal Auction has to compete with
internet auctions and the Exchange Packet has to contend
with high postal charges. The Journal is produced to a
high quality, frequently in colour, using a computer and
it is no longer necessary to send original items to the
editor. The Thematic List has become a Stanley Gibbons
catalogue, ‘Collect Railways on Stamps’.
What will the next 40 years bring? With the demise of the
Travelling Post Office and the Railway Letter Stamp,
together with the dwindling use of adhesive stamps, the
Group will inevitably have to look to the past.
Nevertheless, new items will continue to be discovered and
railway philately will continue to provide excitement for
its many followers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Gratefule thanks to Tony Goodbody who first built a website
a number of years ago from which much of the material in
this website has come. Also,Tony compiled the
bibliographies and the glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
as well as wroting this history of the group. I would also
like to acknowledge the very valuable help given to me by
my husband.
Back to top Home