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By Alison Kay on

Textile design and ‘re-branding’ the railways

Branding has long been important to railway companies, as the archive of the Wolverton Works shows.

The Wolverton Works archive documents the design and manufacture of carriages and wagons. The design process was not limited to the carriages themselves but also the intricate decor inside.

The Wolverton Works drawing collection contains examples of carpet designs for royal carriages, special saloons and sleeping carriages.

This particular design made up of the letters L, M and S would have been drafted as a re-branding exercise, much like the ones we see today, to mark the London and North Western Railway being absorbed into the London Midland and Scottish in 1923

Drawing from the Wolverton Works archive
Reference number: WOLV 6/1082

You can come and see the Wolverton archive for yourself. The archive catalogue is listed on this page under ‘Wolverton Works’ and details of how to come and view material in Search Engine can be found here

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