BAGDContext CSM

I found a terrific US based web-resource about the New York Central Railroad. The site describes the trains, yards, people and communities of the railroad through photographs.

Great stuff!

We were watching Michael Portillo’s continental railway adventure in the middle-east. There was a sequence filmed at the railway museum…including this tender, with lovely bold signage…including my initials.

The letters and numbers are beautifully painted and the right scale for the tender. They add a lot of drama to the machine. Imagine it, moving. Brilliant!

Here’s another great night-time colour transparency by Jack Deleno…

Here’s the biographical note from Deleno’s wiki entry…

Jack Deleno was born in the Ukraine. His parents moved their family to the USA in 1923. Betwen 1924 and 1932 he studied graphic arts, photography and music. After being awarded an art scholarship, he progressed to the Pennsylvania Institute of Fine Arts and studied illustration and music. Deleno was awarded a Carson Scholarship and travelled to Europe. The trip was an opportunity for Deleno to purchase a camera. Thereafter, he became increasingly interested in photography.

After graduating, Deleno suggested a photographic project to the Federal Art Programe – a study of boot-leg miners in Pennsylvania. Deleno sent some pictures to Roy Stryker, and applied for a job at the Farm Security Administration Photographic Programme (FSA). At the FSA, Deleno worked alongside Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans…In 1943, he moved to the Office of War Information.

The Library of Congress holds Deleno’s archive. This includes many terrific images of the US railways and its workers.

Click on the image, below; it’s panoramic…

Here are some colour images of the US railroads during 1943. The images show women doing mens’ work..and winning!

Chicago was the industrial centre of the USA for most of the 19C and 20C. It’s position made it the gate-way for the mid-west, and it was the railhead for freight and cattle. Accordingly, the city had enormous stock yards and rail yards for managing this traffic.

These pictures are by the railway photographer, Jack Deleno.

Here’s a cover design from Fortune magazine in 1939. Fortune was America’s most important industrial and business news magazine.

During the period 1930-1960 the magazine was a pioneer of new forms of graphic design that combined information and organisation…You get a clear sense of how significant the railroads were for the US economy from this illustration.

Here’s a terrific photographic image that I found online…it combines the horizontal of the box car with the verticals of the silo…I also have a weakness for the typographic detail.

This kind of industrial and poetic realism is associated, in the USA, with FDRs New Deal period and WW2. This was a time when the productive efforts of ordinary Americans were acknowledged as having made the crucial contribution to the war effort.

We’re in the middle of our local book festival. I went to listen to the railway author, Andrew Martin, speak about his new book. This is a book in which he re-traces the journeys of the great named services of the past. It’s a book about the present, through the prism and contrast of the past.

For Martin, the past means the golden-age of railways – that’s the Edwardian age of steam…luckily, the graphics from that period are terrific too…

The services he re-visits are

The Brighton Belle

The Golden Arrow service between London and Paris

The Cornish Riviera Express – non-stop to Plymouth and beyond

The Flying Scotsman to Edinburgh

and

The Caledonian Sleeper – overnight service to Scotland

Martin makes these journeys using the contemporary services…and points up the differences. No restaurant cars and no romance, for a start. It’s a kind of psychogeography of the railway journey…amidst the bleak functionality of modern life.

A number of these services used the luxury carriages provided by the Pullman Company. Pullman provided food and drinks; notably, the quarter bottle – of Champagne!

It’s progress, he suggests; but we’re also going backwards…bring back the Champagne, that would help.

The Japanese maglev (magnetic levitation) train has set a new speed record…500 kph.

With passengers!

Amazing…at ground level, that’s a fantastic speed.

But, did you know that maglev technology, based on superconducting linear motors, was developed in Britain? Obviously, it was too expensive and we gave up…grr! That’s another pathetic failure of imagination, that let down our scientific and creative communities.

Well done Japan!

There’s a short film, without commentary, here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-30051961

Here’s a set of small posters to remind railway staff of how to deal with parcels and goods for freight. It all seems pretty straightforward…it’s about organisation, communication, and consistency. Actually, that’s what design is all about.

Here is a group of railway safety posters from the 1940s and 1950s. They’re from the steam age, anyway. They’re designed by Leonard Cusden…a pretty good poster designer who remains relatively unknown…