Vintage 1950's -1990's era (Early I would guess)

GENUINE VINTAGE railroad item & very likely to be the ONLY ONE here in NZ

SIZE = approx 4" by 5"

GREAT & utterly UNIQUE frame-able addition to your railway collection

The Southern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948.

The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s & was wound up at the end of 1992.

The region covered south London, southern England & the south coast, including the busy commuter belt areas of Kent, Sussex Surrey

The region was largely based upon the former Southern Railway area

The Southern Railway was still comparatively profit-making despite WW2, thanks to its extensive 3rd rail DC electrification & the intensive service patterns this allowed for. However, large-scale investment was required in the infrastructure of all of the "Big 4" companies, including the Southern

The Transport Act 1947 provided for the nationalisation of all heavy rail systems in the UK to allow for this investment &, in theory, to improve the rights of railway workers

The railway companies were amalgamated into B.R. part of the British Transport Commission, & 6 geographic & administrative regions were created out of the previous 4 companies

The Southern Railway, being relatively self-contained & operated largely by electric traction, was incorporated almost intact as the new Southern Region

The Southern Region also inherited some independent light railways, also nationalised at the same time, namely the East Kent Light Railway, the Kent and East Sussex Railway and the North Devon and Cornwall Junction Light Railway

The SR served southern London, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, eastern Dorset, southern Wiltshire & eastern Berkshire, most of which were either already electrified or at least proposed to be so

There was also an unelectrified service to parts of Devon and north eastern Cornwall, deep in what was Western Region territory, known colloquially as "The Withered Arm"