BAGDContext CSM

Here is a Swiss railway poster from the 1950s…The poster combines several of my interests: posters, railways and modernist engineering and architecture.

The poster shows an elegant and beautiful concrete bridge in the style of the pioneer concrete engineer, Robert Maillart. I looked, and this bridge is the Mundbach bridge. It’s not listed as by Maillart. The road original bridge is stone, with a second bridge in concrete alongside. The Swiss railway infrastructure is documented, online, with impressive accuracy. The poster, on the other hand, is an idealised representation.

The background landscape seems very different from that shown in the poster, perhaps appealing to train passengers with a taste for a more gentle landscape…

If you are interested in the history of concrete, as a building material with under-realised sculptural potential, there is a documentary film: Maillart’s Bridges (2000). Maillart was a genius at working out how to achieve structural integrity with the least and most elegant use of concrete – see, it doesn’t have to be brutal.

Not the slightest bit realistic; but completely lovely. The idea and spirit if the train is entirely comprehensible. Beautiful!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/07/experience-i-live-on-trains

The Japanese film director, Yasujirō Ozu had a long and distinguished career in cinema. Many of his films play-out against a background of railway action. That doesn’t mean that things happen on the train, but the action takes place in relation to a wider train-of-progress that is given form in passing train. It’s more about the train timetable, and the implacability of the schedule, than about the train itself…

I found this image in an old book about the History of the Southern Railway (1936).

The greatest railroad photo-play ever made….

The Union Pacific route between Chicago and San Francisco