Devon Railway Stations on Old Picture Postcards (Yesterday's Devon)

An excellent contribution to recording of an age long since gone. A picture postcard history of the GWR with informative captions. Picture postcards were first published in Britain in 1894, but it was not until a decade later that they began to take off, when in 1902, the Post Office allowed a message to be written on the address side. This meant that the whole of one side was available for the picture, and this obviously gave more scope to publisher. Photographic view cards - including railway stations - became very popular, and the postcard became the most important way of communicating news or messages, in much the same way as the telephone, fax, and email are used today. The years up to 1914 were the 'Golden Age' of picture postcards, when millions of imaginative designs covering every subject under the sun were published by a host of local and national firms. Devon's railway history is a vastly complicated subject and the book cannot begin to do justice to it. For those who want to find out more there are dozens of books to choose from, including at least one on each of the branches featured. Although many of Devon's railways were built by small local companies, most eventually fell into the hands of two great rivals - the Great Western Railway and the London & South Western Railway (which became part of the Southern Railway in 1923). The majority of picture postcards used are from the pre-1923 period. A must-read for any railway enthusiast looking for authentic photographs for modelling the area of rural England.