Berlioz on the Train

25631311_1_xI was watching University Challenge (BBC2TV iplayer) yesterday evening and was pleasantly surprised by a series of questions about music and trains. Actually, the questions were about orchestral music and trains…not easy for young people.

The questions were about Berlioz and the Paris-Lille railway, Steve Reich and Different Trains, and about the Railway Waltz by one of the Strausses…maybe, the elder?

It turns out that Berlioz composed a send-off for the first through train between Paris and Belgium, via Lille (1846).

When the train arrived at Lille, there was a gala dinner…comprising over 28 000 plates of food! The Paris Lille railway was capitalised by the Rothschild bank, and formed the main part of the Chemins de Fer du Nord railway.

The company never quite had the glamour of the PLM to the south, but it became a very significant international line and had a very high volume of business traffic. Indeed, the international trains from Paris to Amsterdam, and beyond, were facilitated by the creation of the Compagnie des Wagons Lits.

So, there you are…trains, luxury, food and music, all combined!

The poster by AM Cassandre for the famous international service from Paris to the north…is shown above

This postcard image shows the engines of the Nord railway

cccc_66_-_les_locomotives_nord_vue_gale_du_garage_des_machiones_au_depot_de_la_plaine_stdOne of my earliest posts (2011) was about the Jean Mitry film with music by Arthur Honneger. It turns out that this was filmed on the Paris-Lille line.

Image et Son (Mitry Honneger)

I found a top-ten list about music and railways, here

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jan/01/the-10-best-pieces-inspired-by-trains

and here is another list of railway music…and not just orchestral music

screen-shot-2017-01-15-at-4-33-32-pm

 

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Mapping the Railways

l1090086Just found a terrific illustrated history of railway maps in Britain….and with a great discount. I’ll be posting about maps and trains then.

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Carte Commerciale • Gourdoux • 19C

screen-shot-2016-12-31-at-3-06-46-pmscreen-shot-2016-12-31-at-3-07-09-pmHere are two iterations of the famous French railway map by Gourdoux. This was a commercial map designed to help salesmen. Just click on the image for more detail.

Quite apart from the intrinsic geographical interest of the map, these particular examples have beautiful typography and combine information and organisation most pleasingly in the form of a ribbon type representation of the railway line.

Here’s a detail of the general idea

screen-shot-2016-12-31-at-3-27-27-pmYou can see how this maximises the amount of information and minimises any possible confusion.

I have already posted about the maps by Minard…

Railway Traffic Map • 1862 • CJ Minard

screen-shot-2016-12-31-at-3-07-54-pmscreen-shot-2016-12-31-at-3-07-33-pmThese images are from the French national library collection…but you can see a lovely example of this map in central London. There is one displayed on the first-floor dining area of Mon Plaisir, in Monmouth Street. Mon Plaisir is the longest established French restaurant in London, and does a very nice steak-frites…

PS

Here is a typographic detail from another French map…just to give you an idea of the style

190781-fd45d3f09dc44b0b90a1f84b0092e2c7screen-shot-2016-12-31-at-3-39-37-pmAnd here is another typographical detail from a map printed and published by Chaix, the printers. I love the decorative letters and the sparkle they give the printing. We’ve lost that.

I know a bit about Chaix because they were very important litho printers involved in printing posters at the end of the 19C. It turns out they were also the railway printers…In deed, the consolidated French railway timetable was known as the Chaix…just like Brdashaws in the UK.

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Travel Trunk • Paul Poiret + Louis Vuitton • 1920s

screen-shot-2016-12-21-at-4-07-32-pmLovely!

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Railway Photography • Toni Frissell

4e70a92029603c0a39b1c703ccb2f96cSpeed

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Toni Frissell • Railway Fashion Shoot

Classic…Lisa Fonssagrives by Toni Frissell…1951

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CH • Railway Badge • 1950s?

getfileattachmentNice

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Size Matters • US Steam • 1940s

big_boy_hero2Here is a picture of a massive steam loco pulling a freight train in the US during the early 1950s.

In fact, the engine is a so-called, “big-boy,” designed in 1941 for the Unon Pacific Railroad in the US. These were the biggest steam locos ever produced and used.

It’s worth considering how and why things got so big…

A steam loco is an arrangement of parts: fire-box, boiler, and driving wheels. These elements have to be put together to optimise performance within a context defined by the scale of operation (distance), geography (terrain), and all of the existing infrastructure of the railway (loading guage, curves etc). This last is not just about the distance between the rails, it’s also about the size of existing tunnels, and bridges etc.

You can see that, in this context, every engine is a kind of heroic compromise…

In the US context of these enormous engines, the task was to design an engine with the power to pull huge loads up steep gradients, and to keep going across long distances.The engine needed both power and stamina.

By the 1940s, this was the last throw of the dice for steam traction faced with new developments in diesel and electric locos.

A steam loco eats coal and water…so, fitting a bigger tender increases the range of the engine and improves performance. You can reduce the number of stops for taking on water and extra coal. Accordingly, the tender on these engines was massive; it had seven axels and shifted coal to the firebox using an automated conveyor.

The firebox was the size of a room. It measured nearly six by two and a half meters, and heated the boiler to provide steam to two sets of driving wheels.

The arrangement of wheels on a loco is recorded using Whyte notation. In this case, the engine is identified as a 4-8-8-4.

bannerYou can probably guess that something this big is great on the straight…but also has to get around the existing curves. To allow these continental scaled engines to take the existing curves of the track in their stride, they are articulated according to the Mallet design of engine.

The Big Boy fleet of twenty five locomotives were used primarily in the Wyoming Division to haul freight over the Wasatch mountains between Green River, Wyoming and Ogden, Utah, in the US. They were the only locomotives to use a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement consisting of a four-wheel leading truck for stability entering curves, two sets of eight driving wheels and a four-wheel trailing truck to support the large firebox.

Led by mechanic Otto Jabelmann, the Union Pacific Railroad’s design team worked with the American Locomotive Company. The team found that Union Pacific’s goals could be achieved by enlarging the firebox, lengthening the boiler, adding four driving wheels and reducing the size of the driving wheels from 69 to 68 in (1,753 to 1,727 mm) on a new engine. That’s how things got to be the size they got.

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Lenin’s Trains 1917+1924

leninonthetrainukHere is the cover of Catherine Merridale’s book about Lenin’s famous railway journey from Zurich to St Petersburg-Finlyandski (the Finland station).

It’s a dramatic story…by 1917, the German military leaders could see that fighting on both eastern and western fronts would quickly exhaust the German war-effort. In a desperate effort to capitalise on the abdication of the Russian Tsar and to take advantage of the power-vacuum in Russia, thet hatched a plan to move the revolutionary leader, Lenin, from exile in Switzerland and return him to Russia. The objective of this plan was for Lenin to take power and to remove Russia from the war…

It didn’t play out according to plan…

Lenin was cautious about being moved and understood the dangers beyond Switzerland’s neutrality. Accordingly, he demanded a sealed train. In simple terms this involved the addition of custom seals on the train. However, the addition of the seals added to the intrinsic drama of moving Lenin and effectively mythologised the episode as part of the folklore of 20C history.

Once in Russia, Lenin ruthlessly exploited the historic opportunity given him by Germany.

From our own perspective, it would certainly have been better for Lenin to have stayed in Switzerland.

Lenin died in 1924, an event which created another power-vacuum. This one exploited by the even more ruthless Stalin.

Here’s a picture of the preserved steam loco that moved Lenin’s dead body.1280px-paveletsky_11

 

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US Train + Telegraph

1280px-hiawatha_streamlined_steam_locomotive_1951Here is a coloured picture of a US steam loco from the 1930s…it’s a pretty ordinary loco under the streamlined body-work. Actually, the thing I liked was the telegraph post next to the railway track.

The railway was the first information super-highway. The track was lined with telegraph posts…and these gave the train journey a powerful sense of percussive rhythm. This visual trope was augmented by the distinctive sound of the steam loco and by the sound of the train riding over the points, and the joins in the track.

Remember that, before welded track, the railway was made up of short lengths. Just like on a tran set.

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