Railwayana help needed.

Antiques Roadshow, Cash in the Attic and the other daytimeTV rubbish have a lot to answer for.

Talking pillocks pretending to know everything about any item brought to their attention, and capable of valuing nothing, appear on every show. The problem is that this extends to the auctioneer profession too. There have been sales in recent years where local auction houses have taken collections to market and been made to look very silly, when their estimates have been wildly exceeded, or they have started items so low that lots take ages to sell, and their auction day has extended on into the evening. The market is sufficiently mature that auctioneers should know to go to the experts - but because those in this field generally aren't RICS etc, its often beneath their dignity to do so. That still doesn't make their arrogance right, or in their clients' interests. To give estimates that err wildly from reality when items are actually sold isn't good auctioneering, its poor, and probably negligent, valuing

One poster auction which I attended was a case in point - after several examples of poor practice, by five o clock at night posters were being put up at start figures set by the auction house, and a well known poster auctioneer was immediately trebling those start prices to save time, because, as he put it - "I want to get home to London tonight"

I did see a recent BBC programme where a cache of beautiful posters came to notice and an estimate of £1,000 for the whole lot to be sold as one was allocated by the Beeb's man. The auction house knew better and sold them individually - for £10,000

The best poster auctioneers - as mentioned above - are Onslows. Take a look at some fo their offerings, and results here http://www.onslows.co.uk/

 

It was dedicates section that I had in mind.

 

I don't want to know the value of this item, just where it was used on the railway and what do the arrow and number mean?

 

I'm sure one of our S&T people will help but I' sure I have seen these screwed on sleepers in the middle of the track. I presume that these indicate the number of the track cicuit and in which direction the section is.

 

Thanks for that Adrian, at least now I can tell people what it means.