Things are turning nasty on the Swiss Railways! Generally held up the paragon of service and efficiency; things have turned sour following new rules about validating tickets. The rules are being ruthlessly enforced by cheerless inspectors who are handing out big fines…(sounds familiar)
You know things are bad when the Swiss, who are good with rules, start protesting.
You can read the story, here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21294241
Dan Snow has been presenting a short series of films about the history and development of railways in Britain…You can watch the films, here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qh3z3/Locomotion_Dan_Snows_History_of_Railways_Episode_3/
Better still, there is a link to a whole archive of BBC films about steam trains. You can see the list, here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/collections/p01277qd/steam-railways
Some of these films are a bit slow, like the trains, for modern tastes. But they are quite charming.
Dan Snow did get a bit better…but overall his history was too anecdotal. He mentioned interesting connections between, say, the speculative railway mania of the mid 19C and the more recent dot com bubble; but left it there.
Basically, the whole thing was based on Christian Wolmar’s excellent books
Fire and Steam and Engines of War
Also, I thought his wearing a tee-shirt throughout was rubbish really. I don’t think he should do the pink shirt and chinos thing that Michael Palin or Michael Portillo do; but there must be something inbetween up-tight and slack.
Still, the films did give me a few ideas for more posts…
Lynn, my sister-in-law, was complaining about there being too many TV programmes about trains…
there’s been Indian and African Railways, Michael Portillo’s retreading of John Betjeman at home and across Europe, there’s been Dan Snow’s useless history. ITV even got in on the act with Chris Tarrant. Now, there’s a film about model railways the Joy of (Train) Sets (geddit?).
The film about railways modelers, like all the films listed above, was great as long as you forgot that is about trains. The point is that the railway system, in full-scale or miniature, is a unique machine that combines people and technology. It integrates and networks, just like the computer and the internet.
At ground level, it’s pretty simple. It’s about service and punctuality. But at a more elevated and conceptual level, it can be about issues of space and time; from that perspective, it is almost as good as a Tardis.
I have a feeling that trains are popular because at least 50pc of the population love them…and that they provide an easily accessible metaphor for what is happening in cyberspace.
Anyway, the film about models was terrific. There were moments when is was impossible to tell tat you weren’t seeing something full size! You can watch the film, here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01q9vhy/Timeshift_Series_12_The_Joy_of_(Train)_Sets/
We may expect TV films about Chinese, Japanese and American railways soon. Actually, Latin American trains would be good.
Here’s an odd kind of train crash. A cleaner stole a train and ran it off the end of the line and into a building.
This happened in Sweden; where the cold, dark winters can have an effect on how people are feeling.
Supplemental
It turns out the lady wasn’t driving…
Here’s a film poster from 1948. It’s by Manfred Reiss. I found out about him when I was researching accident prevention posters by RoSPA and GPO posters. He was one of a group of emigre artists and designers who came to Britain before WW2.
Looking at the poster, it’s a bit like a poster by FHK Henrion for the GPO.
FHK Henrion is better known than Manfred Reiss and is considered one of the significant personalities of post-war British design. Looking at these posters, I imagine that Henrion and Reiss were friends and colleagues in the 1940s.
Ealing Film Studios are famous for the post-WW2 comedy films. The advertising art-director of Ealing was St John Woods, who was a friend of the artist John Piper. He commissioned film poster designs by many well known British artists of the 1940s – John Piper, Edward Bawden and John Minton amongst them.
Today, this film has more-or-less disappeared without trace. You can probably guess that the film is about undercover resistance in occupied Belgium. The plot involves the blowing up of railway lines and so forth.
The poster is lovely.
I’ve posted about Ealing film posters before. Here, and for The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/aug/04/1
The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits was established to provide high quality trans European rail services. Its trans-national services were assured by providing its own luxuriously appointed saloon, dining and sleeping cars. These were modelled after the American example of George Pullman.
Here are some poster images of US streamlined trains…coming round the mountain
