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    Mainline Railway Stamps: A Collector's Guide
    Mainline Railway Stamps: A Collector's Guide
    Mainline Railway Stamps: A Collector's Guide
    Ebook146 pages46 minutes

    Mainline Railway Stamps: A Collector's Guide

    By Howard Piltz

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    About this ebook

    For this second book in the Transport Philately series on public transport issues featured on postage stamps, once again the author will combine two of his lifelong hobbies as he looks at railways around the world on standard gauge tracks that encompasses the majority of the western worlds major railway arteries. The book will also illustrate railways on other, similar gauges of track where they constitute a country's major arteries, but it is not an exhaustive survey encompassing every country and every issue for that one needs to refer to major catalog issues by such well-known authorities as Stanley Gibbons Plc.There have been many and varied reasons why postal authorities have issued stamps featuring railway subjects, varying from major anniversaries to national pride, the latter often from the former Eastern-bloc countries but that is not by all means.The Royal Mail in the UK has certainly not ignored railways, especially in later years, and the author will visit probably more of his native country's stamps than most other countries', but he's biased.The author often looks in his albums to try to understand why a particular country will sometimes be represented by bulging sections, while others are represented by but one or two stamps. And so, the book follows the story around the world in roughly an eastern journey, learning about some of the national histories on the way and admiring the attentions of some extremely accomplished artists that mean philatelists and rail-lovers alike can enjoy many beautiful miniature works of art.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 30, 2018
    ISBN9781473871922
    Mainline Railway Stamps: A Collector's Guide
    Author

    Howard Piltz

    Howard Piltz was born in Rose Grove, Lancashire, where his bedroom looked out across the railway. He is a life-long transport enthusiast with a special interest in railways and buses. For many years Howard has collected transport stamps, which has now grown into an extensive collection, covering most forms of land, sea and air subjects. This series of books is the result of many years research into the stamps and their origins. Howard is a member of the Chartered Institute of Transport, being awarded chartered status ten years ago. His other hobbies include model railways, narrow gauge railways and gardening.

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    • 5/5
      Mainline Railway Stamps - A handy reference bookAs a stamp collector, I know that many people specialise in what are called thematic collections rather than collect a particular country. There are many reasons for this, but one is that it follows some of the other interests of the collector. One of those thematic areas is railways, trains in particular and how they are represented across the world.Mainline Railway Stamps is the latest reference book, on an interesting area of collecting, and the book contains some fantastic information. Not only does this book focus the British Isles but around the world, and the author Howard Piltz has split this down in to the various continents as well as explaining about collecting. How this thematic collecting has the ability to widen your world knowledge as a by-product of studying the subject.Plitz quite sensibly explains some of the basics of collecting, especially for those that are new to philately. So that the reader has a broader understanding of the various ways that railways stamps have been issued and how you may wish to purchase them to start your collection.The book has been well research, well written, and with some excellent pictures of many railway stamps from around the world. I can see a number of stamps which I have in my collection and I am not a railways specialist. This is a handy reference book for the seasoned collector and the beginner alike, a book which I can highly recommend.

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    Mainline Railway Stamps - Howard Piltz

    INTRODUCTION

    For this second book in this series on public transport subjects featured on postage stamps, once again the author will combine two of his life long hobbies and look at the principal railways around the world.

    For those that read the first book in this series, the following is very much a necessary repeat, setting the scene for the love of stamps and railways.

    The two sides

    Collecting stamps brings a wonderful new view of the world that the collector, celebrated in the more formal title of the philatelist, is led through an amazing world of knowledge, where the inquisitive mind can ponder some mysteries of bygone times. Why, you may ask, do British postage stamps never, but NEVER boast their country of origin, preferring instead to use an elegant bust of the current monarch such as the work of the celebrated artist and sculptor Arnold Machin O.B.E (1911-99) that has appeared on every British postage stamp for over 50 years? Or why Swiss stamps bear the enigmatic title ‘Helvetia’, and as if that isn’t difficult enough, then where are some far-off lands that these days only appear in our history books? Go south a tad, one might be told, to find Southern Rhodesia, or for that matter just a little more thought might be needed to give us the answer for that evocative name Tanganyika.

    Likewise, someone with a worldly interest in transport may find that the hobby will lead him – or her – all over the world, if not literally, then as a by-product of studying the subject. There are a great many transport professionals that have worked on several different continents throughout their working lives to bring the benefit of their skills to areas one might consider under-developed in the areas of public transport. Personally, the author has spent many years as an enthusiast of most forms of public transport and has been to places that until the advent of cheap air travel seemed quite outlandish. Whilst he has never been to Indonesia, he has read, enthralled, of the fire-breathing dragons that abounded there; however, he has been to a lake on Vancouver Island on Canada’s Pacific coast where lived the world’s two largest flying boats regaling in the name of Mars, whilst it seemed to him at the time – he was 14 – quite exciting, but utterly easy in 1959, to talk himself onto the inaugural KLM Viscount flight from Manchester to Amsterdam only to find there was no return flight home that day (memories of the heart-clutching scream from his Dad over the phone will never fade: ‘You’re WHERE?’) or a flight, not much later but this time with permission – and paid for – to go plane-spotting alone to the Paris Air Show. Not many years later, he visited the USA to look for the last gasps of two iconic forms of American transport – PCC trams in Newark, NJ, and the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 electric locomotives. I could also go on a little too long about getting rather merry drinking the local brews in places like Prague, Lisbon or the countryside around Brussels whilst chasing trams.

    Coming Together with Works of Art

    At first sight, it might seem a little odd that one should wish to combine these two totally disparate hobbies, but by good fortune the author happens to have a liking for both subjects and a long time ago began to appreciate that in stamps one could find the wonderful combination of transport history told within a glorious gallery of miniature works of art. See through the ages how the reproduction techniques on stamps have developed from simple monochrome etchings such as this 1948 stamp from America.

    Interestingly, apart from a very few definitives of the 1890s and 1900s, it was to be 1963 before a British stamp would appear with more than one colour; not even the UK’s 1953 Coronation stamps boasted more. The accepted appearance developed first to two or three colours and then as with everything else towards the end of the twentieth century, convention went out of the window as we saw full colour art-work and the use of photographs and, quite often in these days of digital photography, fairly heavily manipulated ones at that.

    What’s in this collection?

    There will be several different formats that the reader will find mentioned in this book, and there follows a brief summary for the novice philatelist:

    Mint stamps: unused stamps, un-marked on their face and with the gum on the back still intact. It used to be the habit of collectors to stick gummed, paper hinges to the back of their stamps for mounting in an album. The damage that this does for serious collectors has discredited this practice and one will often find these days the initials MNH (Mint, not hinged) within the description of a particular stamp or set of stamps.

    Used stamps: As the terminology states, postage stamps that have been used for the purpose they were designed for, indicating that the due fee for the service required has been paid, and stuck on the envelope or parcel as proof. Hence they bear a post-mark (sometimes referred to as a ‘franking’ or ‘cancellation’) to indicate the office of cancellation and will undoubtedly have no gum on the back but traces of the paper they had been stuck to. Apart from its rarity value, a collector will look for

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