BAGDContext CSM

Here 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.

Here 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.

This is a photograph by the great US railway photographer, O Winston Link. I’ve posted about him before…I love this photo; you get a sense of the scale of the machines, but also of how dirty and battered these locos were by the 1950s…and why the railways, eveywhere, had to modernise.

The night photography and the machines give Link’s images a powerful sense of 1950s US glamour…

Steam, Steel, and Stars (the night-time railway photographs of O Winston Link)

Here is a postcard of the railway station at Yunnan Fou. And here is an image of the station in 1910, with everyone waiting for the arrival of the first train.

I love the flags and bunting, and the slightly out-of-focus background. It reminds me of the famous Lumiere film…

Quite an unusual arragement of track at this station…health and safety considerations would usually distance the platform and junction. This looks like an accident wating to happen.

A very tidy station…no trains of passengers making a mess

Here is a lovely 1940s colour litho printed postcard fromt he US. I’m intrigued by these images and how the print quality and the subject matter combine…This is the Rock Island Rocket.

This is a lovely photo.

Thinking of Zephyrs, here is a picture of a bigger Zephyr…this time on the Santa Fe Railroad.

Here are some pictures of the Burlington Zephyr diesel unit from the 1940s. The train was exhibited at the World’s Fair and became a symbol of US modernisation…