There was a terrific Dr Who adventure on TV, yesterday evening, that combined Starlight Express and Murder on the Orient Express, with a zombie-style mummy from ancient Egypt.
I noticed that a number of the Doctor’s adventured take place in proximity to the railway line…I guess he enjoys upsetting the predictability of the celestial time-table!
This week-end, 11+12/10/2014, there is some kind of steam event at CSM KX. I had some fun yesterday, watching two big layouts being constructed in the front part of the building.
The two layouts are quite famous. They get exhibited at various shows all ver Britain. The fist is called The Gresley Beat. It’s a layout that shows the LNER streamlined Gresley A4s…it’s one of the few layouts that has properly designed signage – in Malard Blue and using the LNERs Gill Sans typeface.
Here’s apicture of the Gresley Beat in Folkestone
The other layout was a diorama of King’s Cross. It’s called Copenhagen Fields and is shown by the London Model Railway Club. It’s massive and very detailed. Here’s a track panel waiting to be installed…
This is the sleek new design, unveiled today by Transport for London, of the driverless train for London Underground. This is a perfect expression of an integrated and automated machine-ensemble…see, my post below.
The best part of these trains is that you can walk along the full length of the train. The whole thing is a kind of long corridor, or lounge.
I’ve been working, over the summer, on my book about the safety posters produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. This has involved quite a lot of photography, and I now have a large number of high-re digital files of terrific poster designs.
In the book, I’ve used the term machine-ensemble. This seems to have caused some confusion. Largely, because it is a term that is unfamiliar to people. Actually, it’s quite easy to understand…and I’ve posted about the origins of this term, here
http://paulrennie.rennart.co.uk/post/97902068285/the-machine-ensemble-what-is-that
Nowhere is the machine ensemble more evident than in the extensive railway networks of the developed economies. As the machines grow in number and move more quickly; they become increasingly powerful. That’s just physics. But, their power is also expressed as a form of psychological brutality and experiences as trauma.
Nowadays, the machine-ensemble is solid-state and digital. Weirdly, it has no moving parts, but travels at the speed of light. We don’t know what digital disaster will look like. It could be nasty.
The posters, shown above, are specifically about railway safety. The first is from the 1930s. The second and third are from from the 1950s. They’re still about the dangers of a steam-powered machine ensemble. LC, the designer, is Leonard Cusden.
If anyone knows anything about Leonard Cusden, please let me know. I’d love to know more.
There was a piece in yesterday’s Guardian, about how European overnight sleeper services are being run down and phased out…that’s sad.
You can read the story, here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/europe-night-trains-sleeper-service
Basically, these trains are the victims of high-speed train travel, low-cost airfares and general improvements in cars and motorways…there are just too many alternatives.
Still, this is a great shame. Overnight travel was certainly easy and convenient – you go to bed in one city and wake up, the next morning, in another. It’s centre-to-centre too. So, you didn’t waste time getting into town.
The whole experience was civilised, sophisticated and romantic; even in economy class. Actually, especially in economy class.
The sleeper train made the subconscious association between railway travel and dreaming absolutely explicit.
The high-point of the continental sleeper service was the period between the wars…when the service was provided by La Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-lits. This was a separate train company that provided high-class sleeping berths and restaurant cars to national train companies. A bit like Pullman in the USA.
The picture, above, is of a model of one of their 1930s sleeper units – it’s a kind of machine for sleeping. A bit like the Frankfurt Kitchen; but for resting.
They advertised their premium service by commissioning posters by the greatest designers…
I don’t like to dwell on train crashes, but this one in Switzerland had some dramatic images of a carriage hanging off a cliff. It reminded me of The Italian Job (1969), and of Richard Wilson’s, Bus hanging off the de la Warr, Bexhill-on-Sea, (2012)…
These are the beach-huts, by Richard Wilson, in Folkestone.
The BBC online magazine has a selection of images of trains…great!
Here’s the link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-28648113
We live near the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. I’ve posted about it before.
Here’s something we found earlier…it’s a coloured photographic print of the French resort of Juan Les Pins, near Nice, in the South of France. The long landscape format is distinctive of railway carriage prints.
carriage prints were, as the name implies, displayed in railway carriages. This doesn’t make sense in relation to the aircraft seating-plans of modern trains. In the old days, the standard carriage lay-out was divided into small compartments. Thes eusually had six or eight seats with mirrors above and a luggage-rack in the ceiling.
The most practical of these kind sof carriages had a corridor down one side of the train. This allowed all passangers to move through the train and gain access, throughout the journey, to the restaurant car and facilities. Trains with these kinds of carriages are referred to as a corridor express.
Carriage prints flanked the mirrors above the seats in each carriage. That’s four prints per compartment and, with probably ten compartments per carriage, that’s abot forty prints per carriage. Accordingly, an a passenger express train might have one-hundred and fifty or so prints displayed throughout its length.
Typically, the prints would show the activities of the railway of scenic views of the various destinations served by the trains…in the first instance, these views were drawn and painted by artists. Then, there were photographic images in black and white, and then with colour added. In the last iteration of these kinds of prints the images were produced as colour photographs. Nowadays, these kinds of prints are collected by railway enthusiasts.
The French railway network developed at a slightly different and later epriod to its British counterpart. The associated developemnt of seaside resorts was correspondingly later too. In general, the big French resorts were developed to serve the aristocratic elites of Europe and America. Cannes, in the south, and Biarritz, in the west, were the most famous of these resorts. Dauville and Le Touquet, in the north, provided a week-end retreat for wealthy Parisians.
From the 1920s onwards, the South of France, provided a sophisticated and relatively unspoilt holiday environment. Beyond Cannes, the Cote d’Azur remained as it always had – dirt roads, mountain-top settlements and small fishing villages. This allowed the wealthy elites to play, over their summer holidays, at the simple, rustic, life…
This was the holiday as a back-to-basics reminder of the simple, pre-industrial, life. It’s a weird 20C re-casting of Marie Antoinette’s playing at being a shepherdess.
Coco Chanel even invented the perfect outfit for this, derived from traditional fisherman’s clothing. Rope sandals. baggy trousers and a horizontally-striped top. A straw beach bag, slung over the shoulder, completed the outfit. This remains a stpale of summer fashion around the world.
The French railway company, Paris Lyon Marseilles (PLM), provided luxury train services to the south…with restaurant facilities, hair-dressing salons and sleeping compartments available. The route-to-the-south was probably the most famous of trains in France.
Accordingly, images of the Cote d’Azur are freighted with a glamour and sophistication that eludes other coasts and resorts. The print we found is probably from the 1940s – there’s an art-deco inspired diving platform in the bay.
There was a most interesting story on the BBC news website. You can catch it, here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28130579
Basically, 300 people died, last year, on the British railway network. But, they had to climb over a fence, or throw themselves in front of the train, to do so. This was a tragic record for modern times.
The story also stated that
…it is important to remember that the train is still the safest way to travel on land. Moreover, all of this (300 deaths) sits against a whopping increase in the number of people actually catching a train, with journeys up 53% in a decade.
There were no passenger or workforce deaths as a result of a train actually crashing. In fact, not one passenger train came off the rails over the past year, which is the first time that has happened for two decades.
I am old enough to remember that working on the railways was so dangerous, that the railways were obliged to provide orphanages for the destitute children of their employees. We now know that, whatever the best intentions of these institutions, they quickly became a sanctuary for bullies and child abusers…so, we should be grateful that we no longer require these places.
My own father was taken away from his destitute mother when his father was killed in a workplace accident in 1936/7. Luckily for him, and whatever the exact circumstances of his being in care, the school recognised him as a kind of genius… He won scholarships to Radley School and, thence, to Cambridge University. I know he never forgot that this amazing personal trajectory was born of family tragedy. He never spoke about it.
I can remember the Southern Railway Orphange, near Woking, Surrey. Weirdly, the railway ran right past it as a constant reminder, to the orphans, of why they were there! That’s a finely nuanced kind of psychological brutality to add to the mix of abuse and bullying…still, as Nietzsche said, what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger!
You can watch a clip of Pathe newsreel film about the Orphans. It’s online. And, there are endless clips of people doing silly things near the railway line or on a level crossing. A train is a big machine going fast; it always wins.
It’s not surprising, in these circumstances, that I am a great champion of the promotion of health and safety. I consider the provision of a safe working and leisure environment, one of the great achievements of 20C Britain. I commend all those who have worked towards this.
I should say that I have no specific evidence of child abuse or bullying at the Woking Orphanage. I am simply making a general point about the nature of these institutions in the light of what we now know, post Jimmy Savile etc etc.
It’s the end of another academic year. Success to all our young people and happy holidays.
