BAGDContext CSM

There was an interesting story about American plans for a high-speed (HS) rail network.

The chances of this happening any time soon are pretty remote. The vested-interests have the politicians in their pocket. The best thing would be to reconceptualise the network as an issue of national security…the military-industrial-complex could then step in.

Here in the UK, plans for HS2 to Birmingham and beyond have been published…

Here, the vested interests are probably in favour of HS rail. It’s the nimbys blocking the plan in the Chilterns.

The lessons of the financial crisis are obvious. The only thing the Government can do is to build infrastructure – in the UK, HS railway and a new London airport are needed to get us through the next few years of the economic doldrums. Incidentally, HS2 is reckenned to be a thirty-year project.

If you want blue-skies thinking, how about this…

An integrated global rail network. I’ll drink to that.

Grand Central Station is one of the great stations of the world. But, I doubt that it is the loveliest, or even close.

That claim was made  by David Cannadine, historian, on BBC Radio 4s “Points of View.” You can read the story, here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21353825

The station is architecturally grandiose – it’s slightly over-scaled in an American way, even for NYC. The appeal to classical Rome is a bit hackneyed too, even for the time it was built. It looks like a very big provincial bank!

It’s impressive; but not lovely.

For me, the great weakness in the design is the absence of trains – I much prefer a station with visible platforms and trains. Also, I want to be able to access platforms and walk to the engine. This diminishes the general sense of theatre, adventure and romance.

Basically, the best bit of GCS is the waiting room!

If you want to find out about railway stations, look at Steven Parrisien’s “Station to Station” (1997).

Perhaps the greatest example of railway neo-classicism was London’s Euston terminus (1837). I’ve already posted about the brutal demolition of this station, here

Railway Propylaeum – The Euston Arch

Pulling it all down was bad enough, but replacing it with what is now Euston was certainly tragic. Luckily, there are plans to redevelop Euston, and to rebuild the arch.

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.