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Widow 'pleasantly surprised' by £1m railway posters

Feb 28 2010 by Phil Doherty, Sunday Sun

The first of the auctions has already taken place and raised £411,392.

Original artwork for the promotional material was also discovered.

And there was also 84 drawings by famous cartoonist William Heath Robinson, commissioned by Great Western Railways from 1935 and thought to be worth £90,000.

Other items in the collection include brass cap badges, a cast iron and copper steam locomotive chimney pot, cutlery from a first class train and a station master’s oak desk.

Mr Guest’s widow and two grown up children had no idea how much the collection was worth and were “pleasantly surprised”.

Rail historian Dr Richard Furness said: “Malcolm Guest worked at Paddington station in the early sixties.

“In the offices and archives was all this memorabilia and posters that were no longer wanted by British Rail.

“Malcolm asked if he could have it and squirrelled it away to make probably the best private collection of railway memorabilia ever seen.”

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