Old rail posters sold for £166,000

A RARE collection of British Rail travel posters depicting iconic views of Scotland has fetched more than £166,000 at an auction in the United States.

The brightly-coloured posters date from the golden age of rail travel, between the 1920s and 1950s.

Designed by leading artists, the rare, prized images were once displayed in railway stations and travel agents to encourage people to travel by rail and visit various tourist destinations. They depict iconic Scottish locations including the Forth Bridge, Loch Ness, Loch Lomond, Edinburgh's Princes Street and Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire. They have become extremely scarce, as most were destroyed after they had served their purpose in advertising tail routes.

The collection of 198 posters included 41 of Scotland, and they went under the hammer at the Bloomsbury Auctions' sale in New York.

The highest price raised by a Scottish poster was 7,000 for a rare 1930 image of the arrival of the LMS London express train at Perth Railway Station with the words "Ready for 'the 12th'" printed below.

A poster featuring a painting of a man fly-fishing for salmon in the West Highlands, by the artist Anthony Burgess, was bought by a Scottish collector for just under 5,000.

And a 1952 painting for British Rail by the artist Terence Cuneo of a steam train crossing the Forth Bridge with the words "Scotland For Your Holidays" underneath sold for 3,000.