Lowry station painting set to depart to another owner - for £2m

His large frame, raincoat, and hat are familiar. The figure stood outside a railway station is L S Lowry.

The black and white picture is from the 1950s. And it was in 1953 that the artist completed an oil painting of the very same location - Pendlebury Railway Station, on Bolton Road, opposite St Augustine's Church.

The station was about a mile from the artist's home in Station Road, Pendlebury, and he used it regularly to travel into Manchester. The painting, dating from 1953, and called The Railway Platform, featured a line of passengers. The jagged awning that hangs over people on the platform in the painting is a distinctive frieze in yellow brickwork.

The last train to stop there was the 23.21 from Manchester Victoria to Wigan on October 1, 1960. There were just six people on board, one of whom was a shopkeeper, Mr Jackson, a 37-year-old shopkeeper, from Chorley Road, Swinton, who bought the last ticket ever issued at Pendlebury Station. He bought it from porter, Mr D White, and it was a single to Swinton.

When station was closed by British Rail John F Kennedy was President of the United States and Harold MacMillan was the British Prime Minister. But The station started life as part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway's Pendleton and Hindley line that grew into (and still exists today as) the Manchester Victoria to Wigan Wallgate line.

By 1922, ownership had passed to the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway, and upon nationalistion in 1949 it became property of British Railways.

In 2015 The Railway Platform sold at auction for £1.6m - £300,000 above its then estimate. On Tuesday next week it will go under the hammer again at Christie's but with an estimate price of up to £2m.

The work was first shown at