Remembering

As Puffins may already know, it was my birthday last week. The hints were heavy and even segued into a review of French New Wave cinema – like me, a conveniently early 1960s phenomenon. Thank you for the greetings, and special thanks for one particular present. Amongst the (most welcome) tat from value variety retail outlets, and Japanese model railway accessories fresh from an Osaka warehouse at a third of the UK price, were more than one train book.

You can’t go wrong buying a railway book for dad.

Looking back a generation, being a child of the early thirties rather than the early sixties, and in the manner in which not much changes, my father may have been familiar with a present that one of the grandsons he never knew gave me.

Yes, never knew, because on his own 64th birthday, my father only had four weeks to live. As my own game of chess with death draws nearer, I can now cheer myself up with An Album of Railway Engines issued by W.D.&H.O. Wills. Glancing through its mounted cards reminded me of those collectables that used to come in packets of tea. When I was very small, was there a Dangerous Animals series? 

There was definitely Travel Through Time, which, with its adventurous descriptions running from Viking ships to space ships, rewarded at least one inquisitive boy with a lifetime’s interest in transport. But what of my railway album? The small print leads to  Messrs Wills, a ‘Branch of the Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain and Ireland) Limited’. Therefore, these are cigarette cards.

These originated in the 1870s as a practical packaging solution when United States tobacco manufacturers began inserting blank, heavy cardboard pieces into fragile paper cigarette packets to prevent them from crushing in a smoker’s pocket. By the mid-1880s, companies realised these structural ‘stiffeners’ were a promotional opportunity and began using colour printing to add images to them. This led to a massive marketing breakthrough when brands started issuing numbered, themed series of cards, which hooked consumers into buying specific tobacco brands to complete their sets.

In 1888, W.D.& H.O. Wills became the first British cigarette manufacturer to include cards, again for advertising purposes. In 1895, they issued their first general interest set titled Ships & Soldiers. Know your customer!

Their Kings & Queens set, issued in 1897, was the first to have short notes on the back to give background of the featured monarch. Helpfully, the album’s text from the back of the card was reproduced to the side of the sticking place.

During a subsequent golden age from 1890 to 1939, British companies expanded the concept globally, turning the cards into popular ‘mini-encyclopaedias’ providing a visual education on sports, nature, and military history in an era before television and widespread photography.

Cigarette cards were banned due to material shortages during the wars, temporarily during World War I, with production resuming in 1922. However, following WW II, they didn’t return, instead, tobacco companies shifted towards coupon and gift-voucher schemes. Smokers would clip or save inserts from packs to redeem for household goods, appliances, or catalogue items rather than trading pictures.

The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 and standardised packaging laws mandated that cigarette packs must be plain, unbranded, and feature graphic health warnings. Including promotional inserts or collectable illustrated cards in new tobacco products is illegal, as it is viewed as a form of marketing aimed at driving consumption. However, vintage cards are legal to collect. There is a thriving, lawful collectors’ market in the UK. You can freely buy and trade historic cards at antique fairs, online marketplaces, or via specialist companies.

All well and good, but when does mine come from? There is no mention of British Rail, which was formed in 1947, and much mention of the grouped railways, i.e., post-1923. There are references to the Kenya and Uganda Railways, which, as every Puffin knows, became East Africa Railways on May 1st, 1948.

The first card is an express locomotive, Silver Jubilee, completed, according to the accompanying text, in 1935 and exhibited at Euston during the Jubilee Week of May 1935. And it worked the honeymoon special on November 6th 1935, conveying the Duke and Duchess to Gloucester from St Pancras to Kettering. Better times. The most recent reference is to 28th January 1936, when the featured Windsor Castle was used to draw the royal funeral train of King George V.

In further signs of the times, Rudolph Diesel has become mono-namal, but his great creation, the Diesel engine, has yet to become a common noun or lower-case adjective and still enjoys its capital letter. Only one electric engine is featured and, before the days of enforced secularisation (think St Valentine’s Day to Valentine’s Day), it works the challenging grades of the then Saint Gotthard route through Switzerland. Despite Atatürk’s alphabet and language reforms of 1928-1932, Haidar-Pasha gets a mention on the Bosphorus-to-Ankara 2-10-2 freights, rather than the Haydapassar of today.

Taken in the round, we must place our booklet to mid-1936, especially since it mentions George V’s funeral but not the abdication of Edward VIII or the coronation of George VI (May 1937). Difficult times, with the railway artwork and cigarette cards belonging to a country on the brink of war.

As the years pass, and our own personal anniversaries accumulate, we remember those who served and sacrificed, and that world now left behind.

Lest we forget.
 

© Always Worth Saying 2026