"The Railway Magazine" was launched by Joseph Lawrence and ex-railwayman Frank E. Cornwall of Railway Publishing Ltd, who thought there would be an amateur enthusiast market for some of the material they were then publishing in a railway staff magazine, the "Railway Herald". They appointed as its first editor a former auctioneer, George Augustus Nokes (1867-1948), who wrote under the pseudonym "G. A. Sekon". He quickly built the magazine circulation to around 25,000. From the start it was produced in Linotype on good-quality paper and well illustrated with photographic halftone and occasional colour lithographic plates.