Catalogue of Canadian Railway Cancellations and Related Railway Postmarks including Selected Waterway Postmarks

Second edition

Ross Gray, editor
Released April 2015.
368 pages, 8.5x11, spiral bound.
Colour C$ 37.00 [ISBN 978-1-927119-49-5].

In 2009, The Catalogue of Canadian Railway Cancellations, edited by Ross Gray, replaced Lew Ludlow's 1982 Catalogue of Canadian Railway Cancellations and Related Transportation Postmarks. The Ludlow book had been in use for 27 years, with annual annexes numbered 1 to 22 and later amendments published in the Railway Post Office (RPO) Study Group Newsletter. Since 2009, Ross has been gratified by the response of fellow collectors, both inside and outside the RPO Study Group, who have sent numerous reports of new earlier and later dates and train numbers not previously reported or confirmed. Their contributions have enabled publication of a new edition, with thousands of updates resulting in a much more complete and accurate reference.

The 2009 edition of the catalogue, assembled from decades of accumulated data from many various sources, included a number of errors and omissions which have now been corrected. Many more illustrations of postmarks have been added, to the extent that additional separate hammer data not in the 2009 edition is now included. The known proof and order dates of individual hammers have also been added.

There is one additional significant change in the 2015 edition. In consultation with Brian Stalker, it was decided that Newfoundland & Labrador postmarks should be moved into a completely separate volume, which is scheduled for publication later this year. This separation is being done to enable Brian to include much more detail and context in the catalogue, as he did with his book, Travelling Post Office Postmarks of Newfoundland & Labrador, published by BNAPS in 2004.

Even with the removal the Newfoundland & Labrador section, the new 2015 edition of The Catalogue of Canadian Railway Cancellations has 368 pages, compared to 316 pages in the 2009 edition!

See Railway Postmarks of the Maritimes, A Study of the Cancellation Devices 1866-1971 by Ross Gray for chordal measurement charts and other information required to differentiate the various Maritime hammers. BNAPS published this book in 2000.