BAGDContext CSM

A railroad standard, recorded in 1939 and filmed here, in 1943, on a train…Perfect.

And with wonderful jackets and an easy style. Genius.

Lovely.

Another one, lovely.

Austin Cooper was a tutor at Byam Shaw…and a great poster designer. He was one of the “big five,” offered exclusive contracts by the LNER in the 1920s.

The five poster designers were

Tom Purvis, Frank Newbould, Fred Taylor, Frank mason and Austin Cooper…

Off to the conservation studio now.

Just arrived. Lovely.

Here is Johnny Cash singing along with some lovely old steam trains…Just to get us rolling.

I’ve posted before about railways, locomotives and music…my friend and colleague, Abbie, recommended a spotify playlist of railway machine-noise. It’s a kind of ambient drone, and a sort of music.

There’s something of this in the kling-klang soundtrack of the first section of the Jean Mitry film, Pacific 231…

Image et Son (Mitry Honneger)

I’m going to develop a thread of posts called Music of the Rails over the next academic year. Hopefully this will explore some of the connections between popular music and the railway, especially in relation to the US…that will be Delta Blues, Big Band, Swing Music, Country and Soul etc..

I’m planning a sort of musical railroad trip between New Orleans and Chicago…via Memphis, Nashville and Detroit. That’s the route that emancipate slaves took to make new lives in the north.

Just listening to Johnny Cash right now.

Here is a lovely engine badge from the modernisation period of British Rail in the early 1960s. This was the first big AC engine.

And here is a lovely painting of the engine…terrific. Actually, this picture is based on a photo of scale model with the background blocked out. Lovely effect though.

And here is a poster that shows the speeding train…

I’ve been thinking about these enamel badges. In their earliest form, they were sold to raise money for railway orphans…accordingly, the badges showed the most famous engines from the 1920s and 1930s. Usually, these were the big express locos from the routes to the south-west, and up the east coast and west coast main lines to Scotland. Streamlined engines always seem to have been popular, perhaps because they were faster.

So these little badges capture all the speed, glamour and style of old-time railway travel.

Andrew Martin describes these routes in, Belles and Whistles (2014).

This is a lovely badge with the streamlined loco, Mallard, painted in BR colours. So, after WW2.

Mallard is probably the second-most-famous loco in Britain after Flying Scotsman. That is because Mallard holds the world speed record for a steam loco…

I’m interested in these badges because they have a connection to safety. The badges were made and sold to support the railway orphans…

I’ve posted about railway safety before, here

Safer by Train

and about this engine, here

Mallard

Here are some lovely poster images of this kind of streamlined engine…

I’ve also posted about badges before, here

Railway Loco Badges

Nowadays, these kinds of badges are made to be sold at railway heritage sites.

Here is a most interesting little pamphlet. It’s from 1935 and describes a lecture given by Sir Stephen Tallents about the opportunities, benefits and challenges in relation to promoting the activities of the Post Office.

I’m interested in this because the GPO commissioned posters. The pamphlet has some lovely illustrations, with posters by Edward McKnight Kauffer and Graham Sutherland.

Indeed, I have written books about these posters and this organisation as a pioneer of machine-age modernity in Britain.

Notwithstanding these efforts, the GPO is best known nowadays for the pioneering efforts of its Film Unit. This played a crucial role in the development of the British documentary film movement.

I love the picture of the engineer and the track-side telegraph wires.

The thing I am most excited about though is the model railway layout that the Post Office used to display.

I hope the Postal Museum still have it.