My colleague, David Hendley, photography tutor at CSM has been busy finding me fabulous old pictures of railway engines.
Here’s a streamliner from France (Paris-Lyon-Marseille).
It’s not easy to get a good photo of a train – moving or standing still. The engine is big, but can usually only be viewed from a three-quarter angle and to the side of the track.
Here, the photographer has done several clever things –
One, the loco is polished so that its streamlined shape has some interesting highlights and reflections. That definitely adds interest and increases the three-dimensional quality of the image.
Two, the S-shaped line on the front of the engine adds a lovely sinuous quality to the machine.
Three, the steam escaping from the piston valves adds drama.
Fourth, the engine driver adds a note of human interest and scale. Also, the figure makes the scale and size of the machine comprehensible.
Fifth and finally, the low-POV super-sizes the front of the engine and makes the vanishing point of the perspective more dramatic.
So, that’s a really well thought-through photo where the static engine has been made interesting, dramatic and dynamic to compensate for a lack of actual movement.
Brilliant.
If you use a wide-angle lens the vanishing-point perspective of the train will be exaggerated to dramatic effect, (that’s the diagonal of the train disappearing down the track). The depth-of-field associated with wide-angle pictures is much deeper than that with a standard lens. So, if you light the picture well, everything is pin-sharp, even though it seems further away.
If you use a lens with a longer focal-point, the depth-of-field will be compressed and more of the picture will be out-of-focus. That adds a different kind of drama.
The technical parameters of the photograph are set by movement and light. Balancing exposure, light and focal depth-of-field is tricky; especially when the train is travelling quickly towards you.
But, the railway provides a pretty consistent picture opportunity. You know that the train will pass at a certain time and you can practice the shot! Nevertheless, a good railway picture is difficult to achieve.
This is a picture, from Friday evening’s Standard, of a young woman standing on a freight train parked at Hackney Wick station in East London. A harmless, if stupid, bit of fun you may think; except that the train is powered from overhead electric cables with tens of thousands of volts in them…so, her head is roughly where the cables are! The electricity in the cables will be making a fizzing noise too.
She lasted 15 minute larking about and then touched a cable – and was thrown 20 feet across the station and, amazingly, survived. How she managed that is almost incomprehensible.
Larking about on the railway is always dangerous – there are a huge machines, moving fast and big electrical forces. The railway goes to great lengths to warn people of the dangers.
It’s worth reflecting that, with power in the cable, there would have been an audible fizz of electricity. Added to which, the woman was standing, or dancing, or whatever, on a metal container. It’s a good job for rubber-soled trainers. And AC current.
If you want to know about the difference between AC and DC electricity, look at the work of Nikola Tesla.
I found this wood-engraving on google by accident…it shows happy factory workers leaving the railway workshop against a backdrop of brand new diesel locos…This is obviously an image associated with the great Chinese modernisation of the 1950s. Implicit in this image is the idea of technology and production expressing the idea of progress.
The Chinese weren’t the only people to embrace this idea – each of the major western economies recast themselves as technologically and socially progressive in the years after WW2.
These Chinese engines look like the French SNCF locos that were the fastest in the world at the time…obviously, the French were pioneers of electric power and overhead cables; so diesels didn’t really cut it. But they certainly looked modern at the time.
Incidentally and with the benefit of 50 odd years of hindsight…it would have been better for developing economies to embrace the modernisation of steam power. The rush to electrification or diesel power, ruthlessly promoted by western industrial interests, has tended to place developing economies in-hock to western suppliers.
In Africa, steam power has allowed for a level of local autonomy and allowed operators to side-step problems with parts, maintenance and fuel. Still, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
What most of the world really needs is actually a 21C super-efficient steam loco. Jonathan Glancey has written convincingly about this.
Still and in the great scheme of things, railway engines are the least of it.
When I was small, there was a TV series of train driver adventures with Casey Jones…he always wore a particular kind of cotton jacket with a distinctive woven stripe. You can see the effect on the cap that Casey wears on the stamp.
This was distinctively different from the bleu de travail worn by French railway workers.
A lot of people in design wear vintage style work wear – I do myself. Heavy duck dungarees, by Carhartt, and a WW2 submariner sweater from NSC, since you ask. I guess I am trying to pretend that sitting about all day watching old movies and reading magazines is real work…the new building at KX is on the railway lands site and the whole place has something of an enormous machine about it…a bit like the USS Enterprise; but steam powered, not WARP.
Back in the 1920s the Soviet designers of the avant-garde wore work wear and leather jackets to align themselves, as constructors, with the builders and factory-workers of the revolution…the association of workers and intellectuals was identified by left politics as providing a decisive force for change – brains and critical mass! Frustratingly, this class alliance has generally not been very effective or long-lasting.
The intellectuals take the view that jobs in the service of capital are exploitative and undignified; the workers proudly cling to their traditions and identity associated with their work and trades.
Here’s an early 19C trade card, engraved on metal with a lovely old loco and some elegant typography. The black and white provides a terrific sparkle, or dazzle, that catches the eye.
There’s a terrific exhibition of Russian film posters from the 1920s – actually, they’re Soviet film posters by people like the Stenberg brothers…These kinds of poster are often displayed at NYCs MoMA; but they are not often seen in London.
Grad is Gallery for Russian Art and Design. It’s in Little Portland Street by Oxford Circus.
Next Wednesday, there is a Q+A session with the curator, modernism expert Lutz Becker, and I’m on the panel. Also, there are film clips by Dziga Vartov and Eisenstein.
This is a poster for TurkSib (1929), a documentary about building part of the trans-Siberian railway.
Here’s a terrific image of the BR, class 9, steam locomotive, Evening Star. It’s basically a photographic image with a bit of colour added and with some mechanical tints to make the image and subject matter a good match.
I like the idea of a large landscape folio book of these kinds of colour plates with mechanical and graphic manipulations. A sort of modern version of the technical line drawings from history… but, much more lively.
Also, the colours of the old railway companies will give it a super “pop” feel.
Have a look at books published in the 1960s by Hugh Evelyn and with illustrations by William Fenton. The images are great, but a bit static.
Evening Star is quite a famous engine – by virtue of being the last steam loco to be built, and to work, in Britain. So, there was a moulded plastic model kit by Airfix…
and a painting by Terrence Cuneo. This was turned into a print and given away with one of the big newspapers…
Here’s the story of the engine…
BR No. 92220, Evening Star, was the last steam locomotive to be built by British Railways. As such it was, uniquely, earmarked for preservation from the outset and was also the 999th locomotive in the BR Standard range. It belongs to Standard Class 9F, a class of 251 2-10-0 locomotives designed by R A Riddles and intended primarily to pull fast and heavy goods trains over long distances, but equally suitable for express passenger trains.
They were built between 1954 and 1960: thus the first of them came out just one year before BR decided to abolish steam traction. Intended to last 20 years, the Modernisation Plan ensured that the 9Fs would be in service for less than half that time. 198 of the locomotives were built at Crewe, the remaining 53 at Swindon, like the Evening Star. The 9Fs (9 is the highest possible power rating, and “F” stands for freight) were numbered 92000-92250: curiously, the Evening Star, the last to be built, was not the last numerically, as BR had already given higher numbers to some of its classmates.
The engine was named after the Evening Star newspaper as a result of a competition run in 1959-60 by the BR Western Region staff magazine: the name Evening Star had previously been given to two Great Western Railway (the predecessor of the Western Region) locomotives, and was felt to be apt for BR’s last steam locomotive. The Evening Star was named at a special ceremony at the ex-GWR works at Swindon, where it had been built the previous month, on 18th March 1960, and has a commemorative plaque fixed below its nameplate on its smoke deflectors.
R F Hanks gave a speech in which he paid tribute to the steam locomotive, saying, “I am sure that no other product of man’s mind has ever excercised such a compelling hold upon the public’s imagination as the steam locomotive. No other machine in its day has been a more faithful friend to mankind nor has contributed more to the growth of industry in the land of its birth and indeed through the whole world . . . Those who have lived in the steam age of railways will carry the most nostalgic memories to the end.”
Keith Grand, a member of the British Transport Commission, unveiled the locomotive, revealing its name. It was the only 9F locomotive to be named by BR, though others in the Class have been named in preservation. It was also painted in specially-commissioned Brunswick green livery, rather than BR black like its classmates.
The Evening Star worked on BR’s Western Region and was originally based at Cardiff Canton depot, and was then used to haul the Red Dragon express passenger service to London, and once reached 90 miles per hour pulling this train. However, as dieselisation advanced, it and other 9Fs were relegated to service on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway: on 8th September 1962, the Evening Star pulled the last-ever Pines Express (a passenger train between Manchester and Bournemouth) on the S&DJR, shortly before the line closed (the service was then diverted to former GWR routes).
The engine was in service for five years, until March 1965 (one year after withdrawals of Standard Class 9Fs began), following an accident with a tank locomotive, and then, after being overhauled, became part of the National Collection. It has been steamed in preservation several times, but is now a static exhibit at the National Railway Museum. Following a brief display at the Shildon Locomotion Museum in County Durham, the Evening Star returned to Swindon Works on 3rd September 2008. It was exhibited for two years at STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway at Swindon, to mark the GWR’s 175th anniversary, with GWR No. 6000 King George V (part of the GWR’s 6000 Class) taking its place at the NRM. Most recently, the Evening Star was at the centre of a bizarre mystery: in late 2009, it came to be rumoured that after withdrawal it swapped identities and boilers with one of its classmates.
Furthermore, the artist David Shepherd, owner of No. 92203 Black Prince, announced that when work was being carried out on his locomotive, some of the Evening Star’s Brunswick green paint was discovered under the Black Prince’s black livery, and that some parts were stamped 92220. The name “The Evening Star” was also given in 2010 to a Class 90 electric locomotive. Eight other 9Fs have been preserved along with the Evening Star – the Black Prince was bought directly from BR by David Shepherd, while the rest were rescued from Barry scrapyard.
This is the colour of the engine, Brunswick Green…
There were lots of good things here…Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker for starters. Then, there were some pale kids who came later: Mick and Keith, the Kinks, and Eric Clapton.
The film began with a few shots of old American trains – this was brilliant for me. The trains made the point that Blues music is always connected to a kind of movement or diaspora…as the slaves of the Confederate states tried to find new work, and establish new communities. Because of white American anxieties, the black Americans were always moved on…It’s Biblical really.
The two main ports-of-call were Chicago in the north, and the Delta to the south. Both these places offered jobs…and, they were connected by the Chicago to New Orleans railway. One of the most important lines in the USA. The place names along the line, including Memphis and Jackson, amongst others, frequently turn up in songs…
The first film was about the Delta, so I’m guessing the second part will be about the city…
The agricultural development of the Delta provided work for many unskilled labourers – building the levees, clearing the ground, felling trees, and so on. The concentration of people, attracted by the work, also allowed a specific musical tradition to build up – based on field calls, chants, and simple musical instruments. The absence of electrification and amplification also meant that a booming voice was always part of the early Blues.
I was interested in the people who explored the Delta looking for songs and singers…chiefly W C Handy. This was a name I recognised from a Joni Mitchell lyric…but, I had no idea who he was. It turns out he was the first person to document the Blues and to make a fortune from it.
This was easier said than done. Because the spirit of the Blues is indigent and because people are always moving, looking for work and so on; they were hard to track down. It would sometimes take months to catch-up with singers as they moved around the Delta. It’s amazing how we take a fixed address, and a mobile phone, for granted.
The BBC will be scheduling more Blues music around these films later in the week.
The existentialist writer, Albert Camus, famously said that everything he had ever learnt about humanity and moral education came from playing football.
I express similar sentiments about the adventures of Tintin.
This is the poster for an exhibition in Belgium about Tintin’s train rides…actually the exhibition is about the meanings that attach to technology, movement and modernity – a bit like this blog!
