Everyone is familiar with the usual layout of train timetables that plot times of arrival and departure against a list of destinations…but what if we plotted this information in a different way?
E J Marey, French scientist and pioneer photogtrapher of movement (called chronophotography), proposed a graphical train schedule that is both timetable and graphic representation of speed.
Above, is his diagram of the Paris-Lyon train service. The speed of the train is expressed by the slope of the line. timed stops are expressed through the visual step in the line.
Below, is Marey’s famous sequential image of the flight of a pelican…one of the most important visual images of the 19C.
You can download the whole of Marey’s, Methode Graphique (1885) as a pdf…
Ed Tufte used this famous diagram on the cover of his book.
Here is a picture of the last part of a big poster project by Richard Furness. He has gone through the poster collection of the National Railway Museum and mapped each poster against its physical location! And published this informationa as a series of beautifully illustrated books.
The eight volumes of the series provide a visual and topographical index of the collection. Brilliant.
I am very proud to have contributued to the project. The last volume includes my essay, How to Design a Railway Poster.
The author, Andrew Martin, has penned a sort of eulogy to the idea of overnight sleeper trains…these services are being killed off by a combination of technology, high-speed especially, and economy.
I found a copy of Jonathan Glancey’s budget picture book about the cultrual history of the railways. It was put together by Carlton in 2004.
Basically, the book is a large square format, with pictures throughout and captions. That’s all good, but there are a number of inconsistencies and frustrations…the apges where the pictures blled of the edge of the page are much more engaging and dynamic.
The chapter titles are sort of ticket shaped and coloured…but not nearly with enough detail to be convincing.
George Pullman was a 19C American industrialist who promoted luxury rail travel. He is remembered as combining both autocratic and paternalistic personality traits.
He built a railway community at Pullman, IL, that semed like a form of utopia. However, all was not what it seemed and his workers were starving…albeit in lovely surroundings.
A damaging strike ensued. Nevertheless, the Pullman name remains synonymous with luxury travel.
The news is that a rake of three vintage Pullman cars is being re-located from Sunderland to Folkestone. They’ll be set up at Folkestone Harbour station. This is the station from which luxury cross-channel railway services were provided. So, the carriages are coming home.
There are a number of these carriages about…in Tenterden and at the Bluebell Railway. But it will be lovely to have them locally.
Here is the cover of a book, published by FranckH, of Stuttgart, during 1966. The book is a classic of the 1960s, with super contrasty black and white images, and with pictorial endpapers, front and back
The images were taken on railways in France, Germany, and Switzerland. The book records the last days of steam
There are some lovely pictures of the make-ready associated with steam locomotives…a bit like the first half of Jean Mitry’s classic railway film, Pacific 231 (1949)
And a few colour reproductions to provide variety, contrast and drama
The book is a commercial versiation on Derek Birdsall’s, 17 Graphic Desingners, London (1963)
Here is the cover of a book I found at the week-end. I was attracted by the square format. Like a spiral binding, a square format is a sign of modern design…and well worth looking for.
As I suspected, the book is quite as interesting as I hoped…
Cover design by Fritz Buhler, Basle and designed by Hans Thoni, Berne
Result! I’ll have a look at my Richard Hollis, Swiss Graphic Design book.
Here are some page-spreads; the pictures are official railway prictures, but the art-direction is dynamic and engaging.
Michael Portillo has just begun a new railroad adventure in the USA…and, this time, he’s following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition up the Missouri river. Amtrak’s (US railways) , Missouri River Runner, also follows the river between Saint Louis and Kansas.
The city of Saint Louis was named by French fur traders after Louis IX of France. The settlement became an inportant gateway to the west after the Lousianna Purchase of 1803.
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, instructed L+C to travel up the Missouri river and to survey the new lands with a view to supporting trade and commerce…
Lewis and Clark provided the first maps to support the westward expansion of the US during the 19C. Identified as Manifest Destiny, the unification of the US continent into a single coherent political and economic entity was brutal…involving ethnic cleansing against Native Americans, Civil War with the southern Confederacy, and also established a racial fault-line across the continent that has endured to the present.
Saint Louis was the site of the infamous Pruitt Igoe housing development. PI replaced a timber shanty-town with modern blocks of flats in the 1950s. Things didn’t go according to plan and the buildings quickly became a symbol of inner-city decline. The development was pulled down in the 1980s.
The film, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), includes a whole section filmed at Pruitt Igoe and with a soundtrack by Philip Glass. More recently, the area of wider Saint Louis has seen a number of mis-judged police attacks against various african-american males. At Furguson Mo, for example. This has understandably provoked the Black Lives Matter movement and the reactionary response.
In amongst all this, it was a lovely surprise to find Michael Portillo looking at pictures by the American mid-western artist, George Caleb Bingham.
I love American painting….especially in its early and primitive styles. If you look at all of GCBs pictures they are not uniformally great…some of the portraits are just not very accurate and show how difficult it is to work in isolation and without example from a teacher or colleague.
GCB produced a number of river pictures and these are his masterpieces. The best of these is, Fur Traders (c1845), shown above. Ironically, this painting lives in NYC.
Kansas City remains an important rail hub for freight services across the US. Here is a satellite picture of the yards…
Everyone is familiar with the usual layout of train timetables that plot times of arrival and departure against a list of destinations…but what if we plotted this information in a different way?
We had a snadwich in the sunshine yesterday at the RH+DR…lovely
