STEAM engines, iconic railway posters, rare photographs and Heath Robinson cartoons feature in a free exhibition titled Cornwall’s Daffodil Trains in Falmouth this month.

The exhibition illustrates the partnership between the Great Western Railway (GWR), Cornwall’s famous daffodils, and the county’s spring flower shows, which attracted visitors arriving on special excursion trains eager to enjoy the county's mild weather.

The lucrative link between GWR and daffodil farmers was such that GWR built special wagons to carry the wooden boxes in which the flowers were packed.

At the height of Cornwall’s daffodil season, the Flower Specials took priority over mail and passenger trains.

In 1899 Railway Magazine reported that daffodils leaving the Isles of Scilly "forenoon are in Liverpool and Manchester six in the next morning, Edinburgh and Glasgow by midday, and Aberdeen six in the evening.

"Regulations are arranged for three Specials running with 75 minutes between them over the greater part of the Great Western main line to Covent Garden, Manchester via Bristol and the Severn Tunnel and Birmingham via Didcot."

Today Cornwall’s daffodils are no longer picked in flower but in tight bud, as "green pencils", and go by road to flower markets. In the past picking and packing the flowers was largely done by women.

An exhibition photograph from the Royal Cornwall Museum of women picking daffodils on the River Fal could well have been taken on Fentongollan Farm, St Michael Penkivel, where the Hosking family have grown daffodils since 1883. Now growers such as Greenyard Flowers, Penzance, the world’s largest daffodil farm, are dependent on seasonal migrant labour.

The exhibition at the Municipal Buildings, Falmouth, runs from March 2 to 25 and is part of the Falmouth Spring Festival. It sees the return of a popular poster designed for a similar exhibition two years ago.

Exhibition curator Jean Carr said: "The poster was designed for free by Benedict Flanagan a Falmouth University illustrations graduate. It highlights the link between Cornwall’s daffodil growers and spring flower shows such as the Falmouth show, first held in 1910, and one of the most popular in the country with visitors arriving from all over the UK on special excursion trains for spring breaks. It is reminiscent of the classic steam engine railway posters of the 1920s and 1930s which GWR displayed from Paddington to Penzance.”

Ben chose the poster’s daffodil train to run on his favourite section of the train journey from Cornwall, the Dawlish Warren line between the red cliffs and the sea.

He said: "When it came to designing the poster it struck me that as the engine section of a steam train is long and green, like a flower stem, the yellow flowers the train carried could resemble a daffodil travelling through the countryside."

Jean adds: "The exhibition began with a book I found in the Falmouth Library with photographs by Gibsons of Scilly. It reveals that at the height of the daffodil season 30 to 40 tons of flowers were despatched from Scilly in a day and needed a dedicated train of 16 wagons leaving Penzance.

"As daffodil cultivation spread from the Isles of Scilly throughout Cornwall branch line train services fed boxed daffodils onto the main line trains heading full steam across Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s bridge. The railways were an irresistible subject for cartoonist Heath Robinson, and there are three in the exhibition including the building of Brunel’s bridge at Saltash."

The exhibition ‘Cornwall’s Daffodil Trains and Falmouth Spring Flower Show’, is in the Municipal Buildings, The Moor, Falmouth. Visit www.falmouth.co.uk for more information.