New stamps are being issued in Britain today (19 August 2010) to commemorate the great era of steam railways.
There are six stamps in the set, featuring a London Midland Scottish Coronation class, British Railways 9F Evening Star, a Great Western Railway King class, a London North Eastern railway class A1, a Southern Railway King Arthur class and a London Midland Scottish-NCC class WT.
Royal Mail launched the stamps at the National railway Museum in York.
A reading of W H Auden's 1936 poem The Night Mail by Bernard Cribbins, the actor who played Mr Perks the Porter in the 1970 film The Railway Children was part of the launch.
The reading was filmed in the “old gentleman’s saloon”, which is normally based at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway but is currently starring in the stage version of E Nesbit's Railway Children Live, in the former Eurostar terminal at London Waterloo Station.