Here is a picture of the restaurant car of theFrench railway SNCF flagship service between Paris and Nice, called Le Mistral. This is from the period of modernisation at the end of the 1960s.
The evident formality of the whole is practically 19C…that’s pretty French.
I love the internal venetian blinds on the windows. I remember these, from the 1970s, as a powerful indicator of modern sophistication. In contrast to the lace-type half-curtains of the previous era.
Here is a screen-grab of some of my recent image uploads onto this blog.
I love this kind of visual overview of what has been built up over a period of time. Like a virtual mood-board…
Here is a lovely poster by Massonet for the electrified railway service between Bruxelles and Charleroi.
This is lovely. It’s a map of the French railway system in 1976, made for SNCF.
Rudi Meyer is a genius of map design. He was taught in Basel by Armin Hofman and Emil Ruder. In France, he has worked for the Paris Metro and for the SNCF.
This map is drawn with just the main line railways and the place-names of the larger towns and cities. Meyer has managed to combine this economy and simplicity with a surprisingly accurate representation of the the physical geography of France.
http://www.rudi-meyer.com/travaux/cartographie/001.htm
Here is a lovely model, in O gauge, of the French electric loco for the SNCF Trans Europe Express service between Paris and Toulouse. It’s called Le Capitole.
The model is from Lombardi, Italy.
I posted about this train before, here
Lombardi are at the very top-end of railway models…
Here are two posters with the same message
