A poster exhibit in Gurgaon showcases India’s early travel landscape

On 7 December 2025, the Heritage Transport Museum proudly opened its special anniversary exhibition Posters That Moved India — a curated journey through India’s travel heritage from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Marking the museum’s 12th anniversary, this exhibition brings together an exceptional collection of original railway, aviation, maritime, and tourism posters—rare visual documents that shaped the imagination of early travel in India. Presented in the Museum’s Exhibition Gallery, the showcase offers audiences a chance to revisit an era when travel was inspired not by digital experiences but by evocative, hand-crafted art.

The opening day welcomed a large and enthusiastic turnout, including transport historians, design professionals, academicians, students, collectors, and families. Visitors expressed admiration for the exhibition’s unique approach—blending graphic design, transport heritage, and social history into one coherent narrative.

Speaking at the event, Tarun Thakral, Founder and Managing Trustee of Heritage Transport Museum, said, “This collection offers a rare look at the visual culture that helped define India’s early travel landscape. It not only celebrates our heritage but also helps today’s audiences understand how mobility and identity evolved over the decades.” He added, “Every poster in this exhibition is a time capsule, inviting visitors to step back in time and experience an era that ignited the desire to travel.”

The exhibition stands out for its scale and rarity, bringing public access to artworks that were once displayed across railway stations, airline offices, port buildings, and civic spaces from the 1930s to the 1970s. These materials are seldom exhibited and form an important part of India’s design and mobility history.

Visitors get to see original Indian Railways posters featuring early steam engines, mountain rail routes, and tourism campaigns, mid-century airline posters that reflect the dawn of air travel in India and the optimism of a modernising nation, maritime posters capturing the spirit of seafaring and international travel, rare tourism advertisements illustrating Indian cities, landscapes, and cultural sites through the lens of early graphic art and insights into typography, illustration styles, and printing techniques that defined travel communication for nearly five decades. The show will remain open till 28 February 2026 at the Museum’s Exhibition Gallery, giving visitors ample time to explore this unique visual archive.


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