Almost forgot this one!
And actually I should have noticed the date and had it as the card on the 10th all over again....
Here we have a Metropolitan Railway Electric Train of the mid 1920s, and at that time they were quite involved with the British Empire Exhibition, whose second season was held in 1925. In fact you can see a giveaway card from the exhibition at the London Transport Museum online as well as a photo of one of their popular exhibits, the cut away train
This card was issued by a periodical, issued weekly, that I have not yet, dare I say, tracked down. Railway tracks, get it? And it appears in our original British Trade Index part I as a separate issuer, not as part of the big conglomerates like Thomson. Apparently they issued just two sets, ours, and "The Scout" Bird`s Eggs, a set of just nine cards, medium size again, at 69 x 54 m/m. Both these sets were issued in 1924 and 1925. In that book, and in our updated British Trade Index, our set is catalogued as :
RAILWAY ENGINES (A) Md. 82 x 47. Nd. (12) Dated 13-12-24 to 28-2-25.
Now in our second volume there is an addition, called "Celebrities" (A) this is an extra large plate of "H.R.H. The Prince of Wales as Chief Scout for Wales" which was issued in November 1922. And in our third volume, even more issues have come to light. These are a pair of art plates measuring 190 x 170 m/m and issued in 1928, five booklets issued in 1922 one of which is named "The Footballer`s Friend", and a calendar for 1924 which was issued in December 1923. Then in our fourth volume another booklet appears, along with a Union Jack puzzle dated 1928. This was not the final discovery though, for in our updated British Trade Index there is a large card dated 1929 and showing the "National Flags of the Scouts of the World" measuring 253 x 191 m/m.
We have now been told by reader Mr. Porter that "The Scout" was "The Official Organ of the Boy Scouts" and it was edited by Baden-Powell himself. It was first published on the 14th of April, 1908, by Cyril Arthur Pearson, who founded ""Pearson`s Weekly" in 1890 and "The Daily Express" in 1900 - the date of the first edition of "The Scout being but a few weeks after the book, "Scouting for Boys" was published.
In 1919 the magazine cost a penny an issue, in 1920 a penny ha`penny an issue, and in 1922 twopence. Now it is often written that it lasted until 1966, but in 1933 there was a big change, starting with it being renamed to "Every Boy`s Weekly". This was not a great success, so in 1939, it was taken over entirely by The Boy Scouts Association, replaced the original title, and then lasted until the third of September 1966. It was then kind of amalgamated with "The Scouter", which had belonged to the Boy Scouts since 1923. There was a name change, to "Scouting" in 1971, but the last issue, a digital one, was in 2020.
And to close this week, here are a couple of very interesting facts that I have discovered about the railways and the Scouting movement. There was a locomotive called "The Boy Scout", but it was an LMS one, not a Metropolitan. And that Lord Baden Powell`s godfather was one Robert Stephenson, son of George Stephenson.