london/paris - train ferry

Poster, Southern Railway, Train Ferry by Margaret Bradley, 1939. Coloured lithograph depicting a Wagons-Lits sleeper boat train, running diagonally from the top right to bottom left, against a blue background. Superimposed at the centre is a cross-Channel ferry, against the backdrop of a heart shape. On the heart is a woman's face. On one side she is asleep, the other awake and smiling. On the face are images of Tower Bridge and the Big Ben clock tower in London, the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower in Paris. Accompanying text promotes Wagons Lits services from London/Londres to Paris. Printed by The Baynard Press, 1939, ref. AD 5075 1500/1939. Format: double royal. Dimensions: 40 x 25 inches, 1016 x 635mm.

Southern Railway poster by Margaret Bradley, advertising the train ferry service between London and Paris, 1939.

Bradley was the daughter of the European correspondent for Autocar magazine and spent her early life in France. She worked as a freelance artist, illustrator and graphic designer. Her clients included the Southern Railway, motoring and fashion magazines, newspapers, the Automobile Association and airlines.

This poster advertises train ferry services between London and Paris. Introduced in 1936, the nightly train ran in both directions between London Victoria and Dover in England, and Dunkerque (Dunkirk) and Paris in France. The carriages were loaded onto ferries designed to transport rail vehicles. Passengers in the first class sleeping cars, operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (International Sleeping Car Company), could sleep throughout their journey.

The poster is influenced by surrealism, with the train running diagonally across the poster and its centre combining a woman's face with the ferry. The Baynard Press printed 1500 copies of this poster for the Southern Railway in 1939, but with the outbreak of war in September the train ferry had to be halted within a few months of its appearance. It did not resume until December 1947.