BAGDContext CSM

Here is a lovely Swiss travel poster, for the Bellevue Hotel, from 1913.

I love the flat colour and geometric symplification of the tweed sports coat and breeches. That comes from Ludwig Hohlwein’s designs from a bit earlier, and from the Japanese coloured woodcuts of ukio-e…and Toulouse Lautrec.

I noticed that Hohlwein made a poster for the sports outfitters, Isidor Bach, in Munich, that shows a group of tourists on the railway platform…Later during the 1960s, these elements become part of the visual language of comic books – especially in the work of Hugo Pratt and Guido Crepax…

Here are some more Hohlwein’s

This was my best find in Japan. It’s a modern sign, printed on plastic film, for display on the front of an engine. It’s usually back-lit for special effect. I believe that it is for the Kaiji Limited Express, a seasonal service between Tokyo, Shinjoku, and Mount Fuji…

Here’s a Japanese blog that shows the train, and sign at its best

http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/fujibusa2005/14410193.html

The trains…

And the sign, in situ..

And an LED version on a more modern train (not so good)

And, here are some stills from youtube…

I found this in Japan…a hand-printed poster for some kind of railway event. The text seems to be the return ticket…who knows?

This is an image from a series of pictures of abandoned railway stations in Saudi Arabia…

The picture is by the German artist photographer, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, who headed to Saudi Arabia to photograph former railway stations the Ottoman empire, lost in the desert for decades.

You can see some of  the images, here

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/sep/16/ursula-schulz-dornburg-railway-stations-saudi-arabia#img-2

This is from a small collection of black and white commercial illustration from Britain after WW2…it’s the kind of thing that went into newspapers and magazines. Here’s an image of the Midland Pullman.

I’ve already posted about the Japanese fast trains of the 1950s with their punchy paint-jobs and sleek body-work. Here are some pictures of the train in Tokyo Railway Museum.

1950s Streamlining • Japan + USA

We purchased a couple of these water bottles at Tokyo station before setting off.

Here’s an idea for an invisible train…

The Japanese are at the forefront of tryig to develop technologies of opticl disturbance…in Star Trek, these would be called cloaking devices. It is literally the stuff of science-fiction, at the moment.

In practical terms, their most successful efforts are based on reflective surfaces and stealth geometry.

This is a computer generated image of an invisible train.

I guess they would tidy up the interface between track and carriage. All those boxes need hiding.

Personally, I like looking at trains. Making them invisible seems a bit pointless.

Still it does look pretty cool.

I recently posted a diagram of the Tokyo metro system…here’s an improved (eg rationalised) version. Still pretty amazing.

Actually, the reality is pretty straightforward.