A short note on railway stamp listings

[bill]

This note considers some early reports about Tasmanian railway stamps.

A the start, we acknowledge the meagre reports about railway stamps for Tasmania
in early reports. Thus, the three volume catalogue by J.-B. Moens (1893) recorded
a number of railway stamps for various mainland Australian colonies but nothing for
Tasmania. Yet, Elsmore found that the Parcel Ticket stamps appeared in 1886 (see
The Courier, No. 56).

Morley listed the ½d, 1d and 2d railway newspaper stamps in 1910 but he provided
no illustrations. Curiously enough, the Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue (1904),
published in USA in 1904 or, late 1903, as is customary for stamp catalogues had an
illustration of that type (same as RWN1 in Craig & Ingles). However, that catalogue
was not so often used outside of America. Gibbons listed the ½d, 1d and 2d only
for 1904 and 1905 editions as the 1906 edition observed that they were not really
postal emissions after all.

The A B Kay catalogue listed all seven values of the railway newspaper stamps as
noted by Ed Pickup in 1958. [Ed Pickop is acknowledged in Craig & Ingles for his
pioneering research and for saving many rarities from oblivion.] Still no news of
a Parcel Ticket issue is present. I have seen the A B Kay listing. He did not give
any illustrations for either fiscal or railways stamps.

A later type of railway newspaper was first recorded by Pickop (1958). They are
of the PWN3 type according to Craig & Ingles. A surcharge of 1d on the first type
of railway newspaper stamps was finally recorded by Ingles in the early 1960s. It
was mainly used to get rid of higher denominations that had limited usage.

Basset Hull wrote a serial on railway stamps from late 1934 to 1935. Tasmania is
covered in April 1935 of Australian Stamp Monthly.. He listed all seven values
of the railway newspaper series as Kay had done. He had a partial listing of the
Garratt series, issued from late 1917, but did not realise that the first two issues
were, respectively, all in black and then all in dark blue. The third issue showed
a range of colours, each being for a specific denomination. Values ranged from
3d to 2/- in those days. [A 1d Garrett was issued later.]

It was Ed Pickop (1958) who recorded the 3d Parcel Ticket stamp. It did not fit in
with previous listings so it had to be a new report. The 6d Parcels Ticket surfaced
in the early 1960s as recorded by Ingles in an article in Philately from Australia in
June 1965. So the Parcels Ticket stamps seem to be very scarce to quite rare. A
1d Parcels Ticket was discovered much later still. (See The Courier, No. 56).

Pickop was the first to record the issue of the Diesel design from 1951. He had
very few of them at the time of writing (1958). It was left for Ingles to record
the issue of the Diesel design and a few Garratt issues with a special overprint
to signify "Subject to the Railway Management Act 1935", due to legal problems
with terms and conditions concerning carriage of goods.

Ingles recorded most of the Void Panel issue from 1955 onwards. These are the
very last predecimal issues of railway stamps for Tasmania, except for certain
surcharges in 1965.

Yes, the recording of these parcel stamps is disappointingly meagre. One might
suspect that the Hobart collectors did not notice them at first since the railway
stamps were at first only issued in the northern parts like Launceston. There is
nothing from Basset Hull until 1935 by which time he had resided in Sydney for
well over 30 years. (He left Hobart in 1892 to research Queensland stamps and
later on, he researched New South Wales stamps, incidentally finding records in
Sydney to correct his figures for the very first Sideface issues issued in 1870.)

This concludes a rather brief account of the early reports on these stamps.

[Revenuer]

Bill: Thus telling us all to not rely on and continue to parrot the written works of previous students. Do your own research, how this early 1886 date was missed by so may early eminent philatelists is totally beyond me.

Had I continued to be lazy and just parrot previous listings in my free on line catalogue we would still be in the dark. This also goes for the 1d TGR issue that I was the first to record.

To me all very strange as one would think Tasmania like Victoria had been researched to death. One needs to now review all other papers printed by these early students, did they add to the research or just parrot others.

Dave

[bill]

Yes, it is wisest to do your own research as Dave counsels. That is often easier said than done.

It is strange that the early collectors completely missed the Launceston announcement of the
Parcel Tickets in 1886. The restriction of sales to quantities of at least 12 limits their issue to
businesses and other large entities in practice. Few of them survived for posterity.