London Brighton and South Coast Railway Luggage Labels
The Standard Type
| by Mike
Morant |
| This standardised type of label is designated as L43 in the
Railway Print Society's handbook (RPS1 ©). There are no prominently
discernible differences between labels which could be construed as being
somewhat boring but that depends, as ever, on what the individual collector has
in mind. Also introduced on this page is the advent of special labels for
destinations on the Isle of Wight. RPS1 © has allocated the code L46 to
them but they are, in essence, L43's with a diagonal red cross on them.
Generally speaking these labels, which have survived in considerable quantities, remain in very good condition when one considers that they are at least 90 years old. They are also less susceptible to crumbling than their immediate predecessors but due care should still be exercised as the more brown they are then the more likely it is that they are brittle. The label heading is standardised throughout the entire range of this label type and there is only one major difference in the presentation of the station of origin: some examples, for example from Emsworth, are printed in a sans serif font. The size of the labels doesn't vary by so much as a millimetre which makes the storage of a collection a much-simplified task. |
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The example shown here is about as 'standard' as it's possible to get. The dimensions are 80mm x 47mm and that varies little within the genre whilst the 'from' station's font is the norm for nearly all the labels of this type. Even the destination font is the commonest in lower case. |
| Even the mundane and proverbial 'Gateway to the South' produced at least four varieties of font and style. |  |
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Six variations on a single station name. These and all subsequent images are two thirds of the actual size. |
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| The stations of origin are consistent in accordance with the station name that applied at the date the label was created. This was particularly true in the context of the complicated history of Waldron & Horeham Road. There are, of course, the inevitable exceptions and the two known to this author are Croydon New (subsequently East Croydon) and Brighton. The latter's variants are shown here . . . |  |
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| The labels depicted above also show that the use of other railways' names together with the occasional 'Via' statement had now become entrenched in the LBSCR label culture. Brighton had labels to a large number of destinations on other systems including the GWR, LNWR, LSWR, GER and somewhat curiously the MSWR without the intermediate letter 'J'. |
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Other stations had labels to some of those last mentioned railways as well as to the SER and SECR but there were also some with unexpected combinations of origins and destinations as depicted here. |
All photographs are copyright
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This page was last updated 23 November 2007
