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MORE THAN TWO PRINTINGS OF THE RAILWAY AIR SERVICES OFFICIAL COVERS. by Martin C.A. Czech During a recent rummage through some dealer’s boxes of official Railway Air Services August 1934 covers. I came across an envelope annotated in pencil "3rd printing". I was previously aware (as are most students of RAS covers) of only two printings. one on thick paper (first printing) and noticeably thinner paper (the so-called second printing). I was not able to return to inspect the covers in greater detail (it was the first hour of the first day of Philatex ; enough said'). I therefore set about sorting and "sleuthing" all covers in my collection in the relative comfort of my own home in effort to find this so- 3rd called printing. The official RAS envelope was printed in two colours - Black and Blue. Examples exist with either colour missing. so it is fairly safe to assume that the two colours were not printed simultaneously. It is also safe to assume that the printings were done before the envelopes were "made up" and folded. as I have not seen any examples where the gummed backing on the reverse has shown through to the design on the front: (witness the official Highland Airways envelopes from May of the same year. or the ‘flap embossed’ variety from the 1911 Coronation Post). papers were sorted. and then a sub sort revealed two distinct settings of the envelopes. The vertical measurement between the words FIRST UNITED KINGDOM" (in blue) the "AIR SERVICES" (in black varied either by 2 or less that 0.5 mm. I have called types "A" and “B” Ah. Ah' I hear you cry. Because the colours were printed separately this is just a simple slip of the registration process of the two impressions. Not so! Measuring the letters "FIRST AIR MAIL" in blue to the bottom of printed AIR MAII. etiquette (also printed in blue) on Type "A" produced a distance of 37 mm. On type B the same measurement produced 35 mm. This is proof therefore. that there were two distinct blue printing settings that the two varieties. The next Iogical step was to check the above two printings to see which paper they were printed on. I have not found any of the Type "B" settings printed on the thinner paper envelopes. Also, a check on a very small number of “missing black" covers has so far produced examples on thick paper only. It is interesting to note. however. that both types A" and “B” settings were found on envelopes with the missing black printing. So, is the type “B” envelope a variety of the second printing or a newly discovered third printing? Checks made on covers have so far revealed only a small portion of type “B” envelopes (maybe 10%) which I surmise to be the third printing. Usage dates are an unreliable guide as many covers were pre- stamped before the events of the 20th and 21st August 1934. An attempt to define geographical differences in posting patterns has not produced any logical grouping, but I am already swimming out of my depth. To sum up then, we have both type “A” and type “B” on thick paper and type “A” on thin paper only. One final thought. If one of the stereo’s had a misplaced setting on a sheet prior to cutting, then this would not be a new printing but a positional variety. (Recent referral to an example in Peter Lister’s collection of the uncut sheets of the 1911 Aerial Coronation Post printings where mis-aligned stereo’s occur, make this a possibility). Subscribing to this theory, however one would have expected to have seen some examples of type “B” covers that had been printed on thin paper. Whoever said Railway Air Services covers were boring?