BAGDContext CSM

The Droz lay-out is being sold this week. I’ve written about it before, here

Runs Like Clockwork (models • layouts • systems)

Here is the catalogue description

The Model Railway System of Josué Droz, 1925-35

Completely made by hand: An absolutely unique masterpiece of Swiss precision engineering. and a spectacular work of a lifetime!

For centuries, La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Swiss Neuchâtel Jura has been regarded as an instrument-making center of excellence, producing precision engineering, clocks, toys and musical boxes of the highest quality, some of which are now exhibited in the famous horology museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

The La Chaux-de-Fonds district is also the birthplace of the renowned horologist Pierre Jaquet-Droz, whose three ‘androids’ can be seen in nearby Neuchâtel. It is not by chance, then, that the name of the maker of this unique model railway system now offered for sale, is Josué Droz, a citizen of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Although we do not know the precise family connection between the two Droz engineers, the spirit of the master is evident in this remarkable model railway!

Born in 1895, Josué Droz began work on the construction of his scale model railway station installation modeled on the SBB – Schweizer Bundesbahn (Swiss Federal Railways) – when he was thirty. As a trained cabinet maker, he was familiar with precision modeling and devoted every free minute of his time to his meticulously-planned master work. It was not completed until 1936, eleven years and an unbelievable 18,000 man hours later. His complete railway station system, faithful to the original in even the smallest detail, remains absolutely unique throughout the world, surpassing the finest commercial brands in its precision and quality.

Droz designed and built the system himself, sometimes in consultation with well-known Swiss engineers and specialists. The system is designed to a scale of 1:30 (48 mm gauge), thoroughly thought out and executed with outstanding skill and care, and lacks absolutely nothing when it comes to originality and accuracy of detail. Its overall size is an impressive 6 x 16 meters (96 sq. meters/approx. 1,000 sq feet)!

In November 1936, whilst the effects of the world recession were still being felt, the complete system was exhibited for fourteen days by the municipal Documentation Office for Trade and Engineering, the first and only time that it has been seen by the public, in the old Apollo Cinema Theatre in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Since that time, the complete system has rested in sturdy custom-built upholstered wooden boxes, protected from humidity and cold, in the attic of its creator in No. 17 Rue de la Réformation, La Chaux-de-Fonds, until it was discovered by ATB and made known to the public.

This important model railway represents the golden age ideal of a truly public transportation system which transformed the world during the first part of the 20th century. Words are not enough to describe the precision, accuracy, perseverance and patience, the great talent, which Josué Droz devoted to creating his masterpiece.

TECHNICAL DATA: 3 Complete Train Sets 236 x 630 in. = 1,033 sq feet/16 x 6 m System. ROLLING STOCK: 1) 3 Electric Locomotives, comprising: a) “Type CFF Series 10901” Locomotive, weight: 15 lbs (7 kg.), Length: 20 in. (50 cm), Tractive power: 55 lbs (25 kg). b) “Type P.O. Series 14304” Locomotive, weight: 17.6 lbs (8 kg), Length: 20.5 in. (52 cm), Tractive power: 55 lbs (25 kg). c) “Type Pacific Series 6106” Steam Locomotive, electrified. Weight: 16.5 lbs (7.5 kg), Length: 30 in. (75 cm), Tractive power: 44 lbs (20 kg). – 2) 8 Express Train Carriages, comprising the following: a) Pullman Carriage “Mitropa”, length: 25.6 in. (65 cm), Weight: 8.4 lbs (3.8 kg!). Mahogany interior fittings, 24 lamps, 16 mirrors, 12 glass-topped tables and small electric lamps, 24 upholstered seats, 2 clocks, ceiling lighting, toilets, curtains, luggage racks, linoleum floor and inlaid maple ceiling. b) Saloon Carriage, length: 20.5 in. (52 cm), weight: 7 lbs (3.15 kg). Rosewood interior, 2 four-branch chandeliers, upholstered leather seats and sofas, table, mirrors, toilets and 12 lamps. c) Restaurant Carriage, length: 20.5 in. (52 cm), weight: 6.6 lbs (3 kg). Pink cedarwood interior, leather folding seats, tables, mirrors, kitchen. d) Sleeping Carriage, length: 20.5 in. (52 cm), weight: 6.6 lbs (3 kg), Oak interior with mirrors, toilets, 12 lamps. e) Coach: First and Second class, upholstered folding seats (blue and copper colors), 9 lamps, gangway, mirrors, toilets, etc. f) 2 Coaches: 3rd class, length: 18 in./46 cm, weight: 4.4 lbs/2 kg each. With 8 lamps and folding tables at the windows. g) 1 Luggage Wagon, length: 15.4 in./39 cm, weight: 3.9 lbs/1.75 kg each. With 8 lamps. – All the carriages are faithful scale models of the originals; the windows and doors can be opened and the interior furnishings have been recreated down to the smallest detail and peopled with miniature passengers to give greater realism. The electric lighting is controlled separately, with a dynamo for the individual carriages. – 3) 6 Passenger Carriages, comprising: a) Mail Car, length: 14 in./35.5 cm, weight: 3.6 lbs/1.65 kg. With 8 lamps. b) Baggage Car, length: 12.6 in./32 cm, weight: 3 lbs/1.35 kg. With 8 lamps. c) 4 Coaches: 3rd class, one has 3 moving axles which automatically take bends, fitted with buffers, each with 8 lamps, moveable windows and doors. Weight: 3.3 lbs/1.5 kg each. – 4) 15 Various Freight Wagons. These are mainly open timber wagons of various lengths. Weight: 1.8-4.4 lbs/0.8-2 kg each. All fitted with loads!!! RAILWAY INSTALLATION: 1) Main Railway Station. Of modern construction with pavements and 2 ancillary buildings, all with interior fittings and lighting reproduced down to the finest detail. Dimensions: 56 in./1.43 m long, 27 in./69 cm deep, 19 in./49 cm high. Three illuminated buildings with a total of 40 lamps!! a) Left-hand Building: With luggage hall, stationmaster’s office, materials store, entrance hall, furnished dwelling: 3 rooms and kitchen, bath, WC, mirrors, pictures, hand basin etc. b) Main Building (Center): Large hall with chrome chandelier, flower and newspaper kiosks, hairdresser, ticket office, pedestrian underpass to the platform, automatic vending machines, illuminated electric clock (!), passengers and personnel. c) Right-hand Building: Furnished restaurant, marble-topped tables, counter, 30 chairs, cloakroom, fittings and 3-branch chandelier, passengers and personnel, first and second class waiting rooms, W.C., a furnished dwelling as in the left hand ancillary building. – 2) Freight Depot. Dimensions: 78 in./2 m long (!), 27 in./ 69 cm deep and 10 in./26 cm high. Roofed and closed with open platform, office, W.C., lighting with 8 lamps, space for unloading 4 wagons and 1 revolving crane. 3) 2 Platforms, a) With bench, letterbox, ticket machines, small central area, 8 switches for controlling the lighting and functioning electrical platform clock. b) With 7 lamps, a lighted electrical platform clock, 2 benches, pedestrian underpass to the railway station. Dimensions: 78 in./2 m long (!), 8 in./20.5 cm deep, 7.5 in./19 cm high. – 4) Signal Box. Faithful model of original. With 26 switches and 44 contact plugs. Dimensions: 23 in./60 cm long, 7 in./18 cm deep and 16.7 in./ 42.5 cm high. – 5) Engine Shed. For locomotives and waggons, with 3 entrances, 6 doors and 8 lamps. Dimensions: 44.5 in./1.13 m long (!), 27.6 in./70 cm deep and 19 in./48 cm high. – 6) Distribution Substation. Distributor for 10 different surface and underground cables with switches and isolators. Dimensions: 15 in./ 39 cm long, 3.4 in./8.5 cm deep, 13.8 in./35 cm high. – 7) Lineman’s Cabin. Furnished as a waiting room, lighting with 8 lamps. Dimensions: 18 in./46 cm long, 10.3 in./26 cm deep, 11 in./28 cm high. – 8) Overpass. With 2 stairs. Dimensions: 57 in./1.45 m long (!), 4.3 in./ 11 cm deep, 13.8 in/35 cm high. – 9) Bridge. With strengthened arch. Dimensions: 78.7 in./2 m long (!) 14.4 in./36.5 cm wide, 15.8 in./40 cm high. – 10) Turntable. Diameter: 29.5 in./75 cm. Motor and remote control, micro adjustment by means of worm drive, limit contacts. – 11) Roller Ladder. For installation of electric overhead wires. TRACKS MATERIALS: 1) Approx. 131 ft. (400 m) of Railway Tracks 132 lbs (60 kg) profile iron, secured in accordance with the original, using approx. 25,000 bolts. – 2) 3,300 Wooden Sleepers. – 3) Approx. 1,500 Fishplates, scured to rails by 3,000 track bolts. – 4) 22 Intersections (of which 21 are single points) with electrodynamic lanterns, 21.6 in./55 cm long, and 1 angle intersection. – 5) 8 Signals: disk, 3 pallets (of which 2 are automatic), 2 signal bells with 2 bells, 2 signal bells with 1 bell, all with electrodynamic remote control. FURTHER MATERIALS: 1) Approx. 320 Wheel Brakes on wagons and locomotives. – 2) Approx. 106 Overhead Line Towers with approx. 157,5 in./400 m of cable. – 3) 322 Porcelain Isolators and 250 Compound Isolators. – 4) 2 Cranes, one for double-track use on spoil car and one slewing crane. – 5) Approx. 120 Different Figures. ELECTRICAL OPERATING EQUIPMENT: 1) Specially Constructed Transformer: By “Ecole d’Electrotechnique du Technicum du Locle”. For 110, 125, 150, 220 and 250 V/3 A/per 50. – 2) Signal Box with photoelectric barrier remote control!

That’s quite a good description – excepting the hyperbole…

My question is, has anyone got a plan of the original layout? 

I entirely agree that this is a unique example of precision and miniature mechanical engineering. I also think that Droz conceptualised his lay-out as a complex interactive system. I guess it will take whoever buys this model about five years to assemble the layout. Even then, it might not be the original!

This is a post about model railways… I’ve been there before, but what the heck.

The history of model railways is almost as old as the railway itself.

At first, the model railway was a miniature engineered model. This was amazingly exensive. Also, the models tended to be quite big – in general making something smaller is expensive. Towards the beginning of the 20C, various toy makers began to make model railways out of printed and folded tinplate. The big names are Bing Brothers and Marklin.

In Britain, Bassett-Lowke made lovely engineered models during the 1920s and 1930s.

Hornby, is the name most people recognise in relation to model railways. They make OO gauge models. These allowed ordinary people to construct relatively detailed and complex layouts within the context of suburban houses.

The engines shown here are part of a collection of engineered models recently sold at auction. They are hand-built to scale and are powered by live steam.

These are working works of art!

Only a handful of people are qualified to make these kinds of models. It takes several years to make them too. Harry Powell, of Crewe, made the model and it measures over 100 inches long.

The catalogue entry for this model follows…

The finest exhibition quality 7 ¼ inch gauge model of the Sir William Stanier London Midland and Scottish Railway ‘Pacific’ 4-6-2 LMS Locomotive and Tender No 6230 ‘Duchess of Buccleuch’, an accurate replication of the original engine in every detail and was built according to the drawings of Crewe and took ten years and over 18,000 hours to build the model, it was built by the famous model engineer Mr Harry Powell of Crewe and his brother Norman,the paintwork and lettering by Louis Raper, this magnificent model is fitted with a fully brazed and riveted superheated copper boiler with Belpaire firebox and all normal fittings including safety valves, regulator, blower, whistle, brake, injector and blowdown valves, incorporating full external detailing and smoke deflectors, fine scale cab fittings include wheel reverse gear, lever operated sliding firedoors, draincocks and ejector levers, three pressure gauges, twin water sight gauges, mahogany planked floor with steel panel and scale checker-plate, a wealth of classic fittings.

Chassis with twin outside cylinders fitted with Walschearts valve gear and two inside cylinders, scale twin ratchet lubricators, brass lubrication boxes, draincocks, sanding gear, working steam brakes, leaf springs and beautifully finished wheels, fluted motion, exceptional external detailing, smoke deflector plates,these were later fitted to all of the class. Tender details includes 4000 gallon Type II plaque,handbrake, water pick-up control, steam-driven mechanical coal pusher with cylinder guides and lifting eyes. The model finished in LMS maroon with yellow and black lining.
Length 113″ Cab Width 13 ½’

The Stanier ‘Duchess Class’ designated 7P operated throughout Great Britain and were ostensibly Princess Cornation Class Locomotives which were nicknamed “Duchesses” and many of both of the combined classes carried streamlining in the pre-and-immediately post-war period. They hauled the heaviest express trains from Euston through to Scotland including ‘The Royal Scot’ and earlier ‘Coronation’ services. One of the class was sent to the USA for the World Fair of 1939 in its streamlined form. All the class were withdrawn in 1965 and three remain in preservation.

* Sir William Stanier FRS. Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LMS at the company Crewe works.

* Harry Powell worked all his life at Crewe locomotive works, he was a Master Coppersmith and chief of the copper-shop at Crewe.

This locomotive was delivered to Jack Salem in Switzerland by Harry Powell and Louis Raper. On arrival Harry Powell said to Jack Salem “Well you wanted the finest piece that has ever been built and here it is”.

The big red engine, above, made 140000GBP.

Here are some pictures of the other models in the sale…

I read something interesting about the Greek crisis this week. You can read it, here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18032721

Someone has said that it would be cheaper if everyone in Greece used taxis! That’s really a comment about the huge costs, to the Greek taxpayer, of building and running the railway in Greece. Can this really be true?

Actually, and if you make sure that there are always two passengers in the cab, it is a bit cheaper to use cabs in Greece. This is because the Greek government has spent billions on a brand new train set. They borrowed the money for this from German banks and, coincidentally, the new train set was made in Germany – so the money went back to where it came from.

Having built the train set, they want to use it. Otherwise, it would be like the Olympic sites in Athens. So, the trains go around and around with hardly anyone on them. That means they lose money everyday.

There are a number of issues with Greece that help explain this problem. The landscape and geography are complex – too many islands. The population is too small (12 million and falling) and the economy remains largely limited to agriculture and tourism – both seasonal activities. Bringing Greece into the 21C was always going to be expensive – that’s before you factor-in its corrupt political class and the legacies of military dictatorship. In the circumstances, I don’t blame the Greeks for not paying taxes – that would be money down the pan.

The modern high-speed railway  needs too many bridges and tunnels. The lines have to be engineered with shallow gradients and curves so as to maintain high speed. The cost of this is enormous. The population of Greece’s major cities are too small, so the traffic volumes don’t make the investment cost-effective…

Still, it makes all the politicians and planners feel they have done something. A bit like the enormous highways that go nowhere in North Korea.

This story highlights the difficulties of economic union. Making everything consistent is complex and, eventually, brutal. The encouraging thing is that ordinary Greeks want to remain in the Euro. What they want are proper institutions that are consistent, transparent and accountable.

It’s a shock for Euro-sceptics, but they will be willing to trade sovereignty for this. The inconclusive elections in Greece are a sign of this.

I was invited to give a lecture to all graphic students at CSM. I showed slides and spoke about the concept of safety in modern society and how this had come about as a consequence of the conjunctions of democracy and industrialisation. We need to be safe, otherwise the system will kill us. We didn’t mean it to; it’s just the way of the machine. The machine is big and implacable. It stops for no-one.

I began with some stills from Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967). This film shows how quickly the system can become deranged when we go off-the-rails. This led neatly to the student riots of May 1968 and the counter culture. I then described why the state of flux, epitomised by the 1960s, is so unsettling for the ruling class.

I tried to explain how the contemporary idea of safety has come about. Here are my notes…

The concept of safety is quite straightforward. At a basic level we understand it as safety from predatory violence. We are animals; and animals are involved in a relentless struggle to eat; and to avoid being eaten. Think of all those BBCTV wildlife documentaries…

It’s a long time since we, in the developed economies of the West, have been there. We, thankfully, have moved beyond this red-in-tooth-and-claw subsistence. That’s not to say that life isn’t a struggle. But nowadays, we struggle against something different – It’s OK, as long as we are safe as we struggle.

In practical terms, the idea of safety is understood in a relatively abstract way. We take it to refer to the provision of a consistent, and therefore safe, physical environment for our engagement with the machine-ensemble of contemporary society. These meanings devolve specifically from the conjunction of democracy and industrial capital.

The 18C Philosophical Enlightenment rejected the arbitrary rule of autocracy in favour of a system and structure of reason. The age of reason was predicated on the application of scientific methodology. This was a process of empirical observation, measurement and classification, derived from the scientific revolution, and subsequently applied to issues of political economy and society. This, in turn, led to the founding of institutions based on a balance of rights and responsibilities. Enlightenment values came to be expressed through institutions whose processes were universally applicable, and transparent, and accountable.

Of course, this wasn’t as easy as it sounds; reason always ends in despotism. It was very frustrating for the well-intentioned Enlightenment philosophers to discover that people would not do as they were told. The imposition of reason; through conditioning and training has to be achieved through an increasingly brutal process of social formation. This conditioning effectively standardised the social body, so that its parts engaged evermore consistently with the political and economic and industrial institutions of the machine-ensemble.

Implicit in this notion of consistency has been the idea of a good, or model, citizen. As the machine-ensemble developed and quickened pace, the worker citizen was obliged to keep-up. Throughout the 19C, the complexity of the machine system grew through developments in automation and integration. It’s not surprising that, in these circumstances, the machine seemed to develop something that looked like intelligence!

The 18C Philosophical Enlightenment rejected the arbitrary rule of autocracy in favour of a system and structure of reason. The age of reason was predicated on the application of scientific methodology. This was a process of empirical observation, measurement and classification, derived from the scientific revolution, and subsequently applied to issues of political economy and society. This, in turn, led to the founding of institutions based on a balance of rights and responsibilities. Enlightenment values came to be expressed through institutions whose processes were universally applicable, and transparent, and accountable.

Of course, this wasn’t as easy as it sounds; reason always ends in despotism. It was very frustrating for the well-intentioned Enlightenment philosophers to discover that people would not do as they were told. The imposition of reason; through conditioning and training has to be achieved through an increasingly brutal process of social formation. This conditioning effectively standardised the social body, so that its parts engaged evermore consistently with the political and economic and industrial institutions of the machine-ensemble.

Implicit in this notion of consistency has been the idea of a good, or model, citizen. As the machine-ensemble developed and quickened pace, the worker citizen was obliged to keep-up. Throughout the 19C, the complexity of the machine system grew through developments in automation and integration. It’s not surprising that, in these circumstances, the machine seemed to develop something that looked like intelligence!

Eventually, all of these various systems and structures became progressively more-and-more-integrated. The result is that, nowadays and at an individual level, we understand environments, experience and performance, as a single undifferentiated matrix. Weirdly, in the fast-moving urban environments of the world’s great cities, this seems to make us more intelligent. That called the Flynn Effect.

There are various books that describe the historical development of this ensemble. Nearly all the books are quite specialised. My work has been about trying to join these parts together…

These are the books that I mentioned in my lecture

Darley G(2003)Factory London, Reaktion

This book describes the historical development of industrial architecture. The structural form is explicitly connected to the command-and-control mechanism suggested by Jeremy Bentham’s Panoptic (1791). This form and function of this organisation is applied specifically to prisons, factories and schools.

The evolution of the bureaucratic structures and institutions of control – the prison and the clinic – have been described by Michel Foucault. The administrative implacability of these systems has been satirised by Franz Kafka and George Orwell, amongst others.

In factory organisation, the Portsmouth Block Mill (1795) provided the first systematic integration of environment, activity and resources. Charles Babbage described the efficient deployment of resources in terms of mathematical logic in the 1820s. (Simon Schaffer has written about Babbage and the logical basis of economic and technical standardisation). You can read his paper, here

Schaffer.Babbage

These ideas were rolled out across the whole nation, as a consequence of the Great Reform Act (1833). The 1840s provided for a period of political, economic, technical and moral standardisations.

Joyce P(2003)The Rule of Freedom London, Verso

Describes the emergence of a new sociology of civil society in relation to these standardisations. He describes this in terms of Manchester in the mid 19C.

David Harvey’s new book Rebel Cities describes how the design of cities is a specific expression of the system. You can read his book, here

MOBOOK7256

Actually, I make a similar point about visual culture and the modern city in my Modern British Posters. The poster is, by virtue of its display environments something that is associated with wide streets and vistas. These provide for a form of urban panoptic.

The modern poster would not have existed without the specific environments of outdoor display advertising. Without opportunity, the technological possibility of the poster would have remained theoretical.

It is widely acknowledged that city planning, and Haussmann’s schemes in particular, formed part of a plan to rationalise, or control, the increasingly chaotic politics of post 1848 France. The wide boulevards of Haussmann’s redevelopment were conceptualised to replace the warren of narrow streets that were a reminder of medieval Paris.

The narrow streets were understood, by the bureaucratic powers of the administration, as an uncontrollable environment. The medieval street scene was interpreted, in these circumstances, as insecure and unsafe. In times of political hiatus, the narrow streets could easily be commandeered through the spontaneous erection of barricades. The forces of law and order were excluded from the chaotic environments of narrow streets and their tenements. This was clearly unacceptable. So, one of Haussmann’s objectives was to make the city, as the expression of the system, unstoppable!

The rational ordering of society, implicit in Enlightenment republicanism, required a new kind of civic environment that spoke of liberal democracy. The balancing of rights and responsibilities around issues of individual freedom and social control became the distinguishing characteristics of the new civic environments. (See Benjamin and Joyce).

Interestingly, the new visual technology of photography was appropriated by the administration, at precisely this time, so as to provide evidential support for the new regimen of social order. So, the poster and the photograph may be understood as visual expressions of two, opposing, systems of representation in modern society – the regulatory regime and metropolitan spectacular (footnote).

In contrast to the technical precision of photographic processes and imagery, the lithographic poster offered an exciting and explosive visual expression of the Babylonian metropolis.

Pick D(1993)War Machine London, YUP

Daniel Pick describes the emergent brutality of 19C industrialisation in terms of the abattoir and WW1 (1914-1918). Zygmunt Baumann has described the Holocaust as the inevitable end-point of this kind of modernity.

Notice where the railway leads…

The principle expression of the machine-ensemble is the development of the railway system. This is something that we can all relate to and is why I write this blog. Beaumont & Freeman describe this in relation to ideas of psychoanalysis and cultural geography. The railway is understood to imply the annihilation of time and space…

The machine can’t be stopped. Everything facilitates its progress.

Beaumont M & Freeman M (2011)

Railway and Modernity Bern CH, Peter Lang

Paul Verilio describes how the acceleration of modern life has significant implications for our political institutions, the social body and democracy

Virilio P(1977)Speed and Politics NYC, Semiotext(e)

The general acceleration of modern life is experienced as a speeding up of the machine-ensemble. The survival of the fittest requires, in these circumstances, a heightened level of visual acuity. The impact of visual technologies and control mechanisms on our cognitive development and our sense of personal identity is described, here

Crary J(2001)Suspensions of Perception Cambridge MA, MITP

Virilio P(1984)War and Cinema London, Verso

Of course, the machine-ensemble being described here is based on Newtonian mechanics – it’s made up of cogs, wheels, levers and pulleys (just like the Portsmouth Block Mill). Nowadays, the command-and-control systems of the global economy are integrated into the data-flows of digital networks. The Internet is a machine and the iphone is the panoptic…

Lyon D(2007)Theorizing Surveillance Devon, Willan

During the 1940s and 1950s, the computer pioneers Alan Turing and John von Neumann conceptualised the possibility of self-replicating machine intelligence. The subsequent lessons of cognitive psychology suggest that, actually, we are those self-replicating machines!

No wonder we need to feel safe. We need it to survive.

I’ve posted about these themes on my various blog sites. These are

Pamphleteer

http://areopagitica.blog.co.uk/

superseded by

the New Pamphleteer

http://paulrennie.rennart.co.uk/

Just search the posts for “standardisation” or “machine.”

The back-catalogue on the old site is more extensive.

This new blog explores all the stuff I’m interested in – systems, architecture, technology, design and communication (and restaurants) through the prism of trains…

Obviously, all this provides a distant historical context to what is happening now. I firmly believe that we are stuck in the long shadow of the 18C. If you want a more up-to-date perspective, check out the films of Adam Curtis

http://thoughtmaybe.com/browse/video/adam-curtis

especially, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

The Enlightenment conceptualised the application of reason, and contrasted this with emotion and feeling. This is understood as a conflict between reason and romance. Either way, we are stuffed.

Reason always ends in the despotic imposition of systems and structures. Conversely, the world of feelings is inconsistent and chaotic…

This is a post about graphic communication. The poster image, Transport, above, is by Gustav Klutsis (1895-1938) and dates from 1929. There are a number of things to say about it…

You can tell from the red star that the poster is associated with the revolutionary politics of the Soviet Union.

The Russian revolution (1918) was one of the big political consequences of WW1. The Russian autocracy failed miserably in its prosecution of the war. The Russian army was left starving and ill-equiped. The misery provided the perfect conditions for a revolutionary coup, led by Lenin and Trotsky. The immediate objectives of the revolution were to modernise the Russian economy and to provide a more egalitarian society for their people.

Remember, the Russian autocracy had maintained a feudal system until the beginning of the 20C. Military force and religious superstition combined to oppress the great majority.

The new politics attempted to fast-track Russia into the 20C. This involved a number of dramatic policies that extended the railway network, industrialised the Russian interior, collectivised the agricultural production and so on. It was heroic stuff; but mostly misguided.

The accelerated process of modernisation, required to shore up the new regime against counter-revolution, undermined quality-control and administration. You can read all about this in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929-1930). The result was a descent into the chaos and recrimination of show-trials, purges, enforced poverty and mass-displacements. That’s not was intended. David Lean’s great film, Doctor Zhivago (1965) is a romance played out against the vast Russian landscape and the backdrop of this political upheaval.

Anyway, back to the poster… Klutsis is providing an information graphic that illustrates the great progress in transport infrastructure under the new leadership.

The Rusian artistic avant-garde understood that the new politics would require a new visual language. The signs and symbols of the past were obviously freighted with meanings associated with traditional forms of command-and-control.

Accordingly, the artists of the Suprematist movement conceptualised a new visual language around the idea of pure geometric forms – the square, the triangle, the circle etc. The most famous image associated with this is the famous Black Square (1915) by Malevitch.

The pioneer graphic designer, El Lissitzky, applied this new language to the modernist discourse of revolution. Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919) shows the Red Army as a dynamic triangle attacking the defensive position of counter-revolutionary forces.

Lissitzky, Malevitch and Klutisis each understood that the triangle is always a dynamic shape. It adds focus and precision to the implied percussive force of momentum. The obvious visual association with arrows and daggers further re-inforce this idea. These qualities are intrinsic to the form.

Malevitch defined the basic elements of the new graphic language. Lissitzky experimented with position, orientation and scale to make meaning. Klutsis applied this theory to practical issues of communication. Lissitzky and Klutsis are Constructivists.

In the Klutsis poster, the Red Wedge is re-cast as a quantitative symbol. The triangle implies a soaring, upward-only, trajectory of industrial production and modernisation. The poster is visual communication, propaganda and information graphic combined. The camel and the out-of-date steam train probably undermine this vision slightly.

The graphic avant-garde in Soviet Russia were amongst the first to make widespread use of photographic elements in mass-produced visual communication. Printing these images in large numbers and in large poster formats required a particular form of assembly, or montage. You can see that the Klutsis poster is made up of parts; some photographic and some typographic. The trick is that the the whole thing appears coherent and meaningful, even from a distance.

Of course, it wasn’t quite as straightforward as this. The technological base of the Russian print industry was 19C and it wasn’t possible to print from high quality half-tones. So, they used lithographic draughtsmen to draw photographically. Mechanical reproduction, as promoted by modernist design philosophers, took a long time to arrive.

Not surprisingly, the political benefits of mass production and mechanical reproduction were contested by the vested, and reactionary, interests of print and media control.

Even worse, the Soviet leadership after Lenin became increasingly paranoid. Klutsis was arrested and executed in 193

In my other life, away from CSM, Karen and me run an antique shop in Folkestone. I specialise in vintage graphic design, old seaside posters and so on…

One of our great pleasures is the weekly arrival of the Antique Trades Gazette. This is a weekly trade newspaper that gives you the results and gossip about the auction world. There’s also a diary of forthcoming auctions around the world. Obviously, a lot of this is on the internet; but the ATG still provides a concentrated and specific hit on the world of collecting.

Cologne technical specialists Auction Team Brecker (May 26th) are selling the model railway layout belonging to Josue Droz. This is a complete layout – with track, stations, engines and so on. It’s a thing of legend…

The actual inventory is amazing: the layout measures 96 square metres, it has over thirty different bits of rolling stock and took eleven years to build (18 000hrs). The models are made to 1:30 scale and the layout is based on parts of the Swiss Railway – the Schweizer Bundesbhan (SBB). That’s not co-incidence, the SBB runs like clockwork!

Before you ask, the train set is electric. But my point still stands.

The layout has only been exhibited once, in 1936. Since then, it’s been packed in boxes and was thought lost. So, the discovery of the whole things is a stupendous find. That’s without considering that the large size of the models and buildings, and their early date, make them very valuable. The top estimate for the whole thing is about 100 000 euros.

If you do the maths, that’s about 5 euros an hour for the work of making this by all by hand. I would expect the estimate to be exceeded!

The auctioneers have posted a silly film on the internet of some of this layout. Just trains going back and forth. I don’t know whether there is a plan of the whole original layout. If not, it will take about five years to assemble.

Now, to the point of this story…

The architect 0f this model, conceived as an entirely complete and inter-connected system and entirely scratch built, was Droz. He was a descendent of the famous Swiss horologist (clockmaker) Pierre Jaquet Droz (1721-1790). This connection immediately makes the layout more interesting as a piece of system design.

As well as building precision timepieces, Jaquet Droz was also famous for the construction of complex automata. The history of clockmaking is relatively well known. Dava Sobel’s Longitude and the film, with Jeremy Irons, which described the battle of John Harrison to win the Longitude Prize is well known. It provides a terrific introduction to why accurate timekeeping is crucial in 18C seafaring, navigation and location finding. In the 19C, these issues transposed themselves to railways and the standardisations of international timezones. I’ve posted about all that before.

Now, precision timepieces are a bit esoteric for most people. So, it was important for the clockmakers to provide another kind of example of their work. During the 18C and early 19C, automated models (of birds and figures) became popular. These were an evolution of clocks and the large-scale table-top orreries that show the movement of the planets around the sun.

The conception of the natural world at this time was based on a fusion of Newtonian mechanics and the idea of the ghost in the machine from Descrates. The notion that you could understand all human movement as an interaction of cogs, levers and wheels, made it was a short step to elaborating a model to show this by example.

These automated displays caused a sensation. Nowadays, we identify these kind of human-form machines as androids and robots and describe these systems as cybernetic.

The next development was align this idea of automation to industrial organisation, society and to cognition. This didn’t happen straight away. Let’s look at how this developed

Let’s have a look, briefly, at how this took shape.

The Division of Labour

The division of labour was first conceptualised by Adam Smith (1776) in his Wealth of Nations. Smith used the famous example of the pin workshop to illustrate his point. The division of labour, within the craft based factory, allows for a massively increased productivity of output. The combining, by Smith, of efficiency, production and rational self-interest, provided the template for the industrial revolution.

The Specialisation of Labour

Implicit in Smith’s concept was the specialisation of labour. This is the principle that suggests that, once you have divided up the process, it makes sense for your operatives to specialise. They will become better (more efficient and more productive) through practice. We automatically do this for everyday purposes around the house (putting up shelves, or washing up and laundry, for example).

Command

These organising principles were first made evident at the Portsmouth Block Mill (1796). Samuel Bentham, Henry Maudslay and Marc Brunel arranged the factory so that steam power, machine tools and the division of labour were combined to orchestrate a fantastic mechanical ballet of production. According to this organisation, the rhythms of production were increasingly set by the tempo of the machine. It’s no coincidence that this system was first set up within a military context.

Balancing the productive output of this machinery required the observational control of resources and machines, along with the disciplinary control, by management, of the quality and quantity of work produced through the direction of human agency. In such environments, control and command were observational and disciplinary functions based on military experience.

You can still observe this type of organisation in a well-drilled kitchen of a commercial restaurant in France. Imposing discipline and structure to these proceedings is what Gordon Ramsay does! The team in a kitchen is called the brigade de cuisine and was first organised by the famous chef, Escoffier.

You can find out more about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_de_cuisine

Automatic Calculation

Earlier, I mentioned that accurate and precise timekeeping were a necessary part of navigation. The other part required is accurate mathematical calculation.

The tedious and time-consuming calculations required for the production of navigational tables (naval power again) compromised their accuracy. The consequences of miss-calculation were expensive and fatal. Accordingly, the mathematician and logician Charles Babbage proposed the construction of a mechanical computing devices. These were the Difference Engine (1822) and Engine Number Two (1847). Subsequently, Babbage proposed an Analytical Engine (1871). This last device is now recognised as the precursor, in theoretical form at least, of the modern computer.

The machines remained unrealised in Babbage’s own lifetime. This was due to a variety of reasons including scale, complexity, and Babbage’s various personality defects.  The project was undercapitalised from the start. Babbage could not afford to manufacture and assemble the machines himself. Accordingly he out-sourced the production of parts, only to find that there were relatively few workshops with the capacity and precision required. Indeed, there were no agreed standards of engineering tolerance. An important consequence of Babbage’s efforts was industrial standardisation.

Control

Confronted with these frustrations, Babbage applied himself to the design of factory systems. The issues of quality control, efficiency and productivity addressed by Babbage suggested several new (cybernetic) ideas – sequential organisation, branching and looping. These mechanisms allowed for the factory system to begin directing itself towards an optimal level of efficiency. The entirely rational basis for this decision making in relation to the allocation of resources, suggested the separation of problem-solving and assembly.

In this context, the management of the new industrial system was expressed through the concept of control. This was a more sensitive and nuanced than the command structures associated with military organisation. Babbage understood that standardisation and integration were linked.

In its early phase, the industrial revolution was a slightly distant and separate thing from the London political elite. By the 1830s, the success of the industrialists, their wealth, power and influence had made them significant for the political elite. The northern industrial base was assimilated, along with its values of self-help, free-trade and co-operation, through the Great Reform Act (1832). The brutally normative physical structures of school, prison and factory were augmented by a series of cognitive and conceptual standardisations. These were implemented during a remarkable period after about 1840. The new social structures include the standard one-penny letter rate, the standardisation of train timetables by Bradshaw, and the standardisation of engineering threads by Whitworth. Patrick Joyce has written about the normative potential of standards.

By the 1850s, the extension of democracy had engendered a series of normative structures that effectively controlled of the population. Industrial discipline and democratic responsibility were thereby associated in the social formation of the population.

Economy, democracy, identity and observation combine to shape this system for 100 years. The railway is a benign and familiar example of this kind of normative system.

Fordism

The combination of ideas from Smith, Bentham and Babbage and their application to manufacturing led, inevitably, to the increasing automation of assembly. The work of Henry Ford (1908) in motor car manufacturing pioneered this form of industrial organisation (Fordism). Ford also understood that the productivity gain implicit in this organisation would allow the payment of generous wages to his workers. This would provide an additional competitive advantage to his enterprise. In Fordism, de-skillimg and prosperity are unexpectedly combined.

The potential of Fordism can be illustrated through the example of manufacturing the Rolls Royce Merlin engine during WW2. This engine was considered so vital to British military objectives that, after 1940, its manufacture was out-sourced to the Packard Motor Company in the US. The American company suggested a model of assembly based on the minute division of labour and the exact specification of engineering tolerance (back to Babbage).

This manufacturing (assembly) system was developed to address the over-riding urgency of time-constraints in war production. Within this context, there was simply no time to train skilled workers. The American system provided a sharp contrast with the Rolls Royce factory at Derby which was based on a level of engineering expertise throughout the workshop. This had resulted in high levels of problem-solving ability across the factory; but at the cost of lengthy training.

The de-skilling and prosperity associated with industrial assembly had a profound impact after WW2. For the first time, young workers could, under this system, receive wages that gave them disposable income. The emergence, from about 1950 onwards of a distinctly youthful pattern of consumerism devolves entirely from the benefits of Fordist assembly.

Looking and Counting

The observational (or panoptic) control of manufacturing, pioneered by Bentham and Babbage, was enshrined in FW Taylor’s Theory of Scientific Management (1913) and the increasingly accurate measurement of time, motion and resources. The collection of data associated with the production, efficiency and profit of manufacturing processes (not just the financial accounting) is now central to every part of the economy.

During WW2, the co-ordination of allies, services, arms and men implicit in the planning of D-Day for example, required a new level of operational detail. The statistical measurement of men and resources and their logistical tracking was elaborated into a system of operational research. This provided for a management system based on the accurately choreographed movement of men and resources. (Interestingly, containerised shipping came into play during the 1950s and standardised this system acros the globe). The development of computers made the collection of data and the tracking of parts through the system much easier.

The management of systems, predicted by Babbage, became semi automated and led to a new system of integrated and economical resource management. All of this is evident in the automated integration of model railway layouts.

The Droz railway is an early 20C example of the technical complexity and sophistication of mechanical interaction and electrical control systems. The whole of the 20C is there.

I found this amazing post about the Droz automata, here

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I’ll be posting about the general history of model railways again.

There’s a nice short piece, by Ian Jack in today’s Guardian, about the repeal of ancient laws (and about railways). You can read it, here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/20/ian-jack-abolishing-obsolete-laws

Karen brought home a bag of old photographs that had belonged to her mother. Here is her grandfather; Karen’s mother’s father, Julius Slonim, standing on the platform with a snow covered observation car in the background. Looks like he’s about to leave on an adventure…

Julius was a successful business man in London. He ran an import and export business that specialised in Bohemian crystal. The family was named after a town in Belarus. We think he came to Britain at the end of the 19C and called himself after his home-town.

We never knew Julius and the facts about the older generation, their arrival in Britain and their struggle to get on are all a bit hazy. Anyway, it’s a good job he got out when he did. There won’t be many Jewish people left there now.

He travelled to the USA too. This picture looks like it could have been taken in America. The design of the observation car is typically American. The hat-and-coat combo is a little film-noirish, so the picture could be from the 1930s.

Julius played an prominent role in the Jewish community of the East End. He was active  in the London School Board. The LSB promoted, and provided, elementary education amongst the poorest communities in London. It’s efforts were later incorporated into the LCC.

Back to America…The open platform at each end of the US style passenger cars is typical. Nowadays, we only see it when Presidential candidates embark on whistle-stop tours in the run-up to an election. Here’s a picture of Barak Obama at the back of the train

The idea is that, before the age of air travel, the train could carry politicians to within reach of even the most isolated community. The whistle would blow, and people would gather around for a speech.

You can get a sense of what this was all about from this picture of Harry S Truman in 1948. In an age of blanket TV coverage, the Barak train was more a PR stunt.

Three cheers for Julius.

If you’ve been up late, you may have heard the shipping forecast on BBC Radio.

This is a litany of strange place-names, with weather conditions, announced for the benefit of mariners and lighthouse keepers. If you’re at sea, it’s a practical lifesaver; if you’re on land, it provides for a moment of quiet psychogeographical romanticism…

Like a lot of BBC Radio, it provides a consistent backdrop to everyday life.

This is a handy cotton hanky with the map of the shipping forecast divisions

Obviously, I find the same kinds of associations and escape in the imagery of trains, travel posters and so-on. It’s a short step from trains to boats. Speaking of which, it was great to find a whole box of ship models, including a couple of hearty tug boats. On closer inspection, it turned out these were “waterline” models, scratch-built from cardboard and toothpicks.

A quick look on the interweb thingy and it seems they might even be Bassett Lowke models. Bassett Lowke models were world famous in their day and are a staple of collectors. Bassett Lowke was quite a personality in his own right too. He had a house designed for himself by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The house is in Northampton.

I’m not sure the ship models are quite good enough, but we’ll keep checking.

In addition to the bigger ships, there were two submarines. Great, I can play out the battles of the Atlantic – think of the films In Which We Serve (1942), The Cruel Sea (1953), and Das Boot (1981). In winter, I can even wear my Royal Navy duffel coat.

My favourite models are those of the tugs. These simple boat shapes reminded me of the famous tug in Cassandre’s shipping poster (see header above), with a nod to the primitive painter Alfred Wallis.

Wallis was a retried seafarer who was discovered, living on the beach at St Ives, by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood. They recognised him as an authentic and unspoiled genius. His false perspectives were especially appealing to these proto-modernists.

You can see lots of Alfred Wallis pictures at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.

Once you’ve figured out where all this comes from, you get back to the source – Alfred Wallis (not Picasso).

By a strange coincidence, the connection between boats, submarines and trains will also be evident at Chatham Historic Dockyard, Kent. They have a gallery show of artists who specialise in railway engines…It’s just opened and will be on for a while. They also have pictures from the National Maritime Museum too. Ship ahoy!

This is a post about Herbert Matter and his identity for the New Haven Railroad. Actually, I don’t really need to say very much. It’s all here and written by Jessica Helfand too!

http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=4697

By the late 1940s, the New Haven Railroad boasted one of the most modern fleets in the country — and arguably, what was, in its time, one of the most identifiable symbols in America.

In April 1954, Patrick B. McGinnis became president of the New Haven Railroad. An outspoken and controversial executive who vowed to lead train travel into the space age, his tenure would last less than two years — yet during this time, his artistically-trained wife initiated a program to rethink the company’s corporate image through the use of graphic design principles. Working with Florence Knoll on the then-new executive suite at Grand Central Terminal, Lucille McGinnis convinced her husband that the railroad needed a new logo.

Enter Herbert Matter, Swiss-born designer, photographer and Yale professor whose own education was framed by apprenticeships with Cassandre, Leger and Le Corbusier. Assisted by Norman Ives, Matter developed a forceful typographic pairing of uppercase “N” and H” letterforms that included monochromatic as well as two-color (red/black and later, blue/black) variations. The new visual identity debuted in April of 1955 — exactly one year after McGinnis took office. Matter was named Design Director for the New Haven Railroad a mere two months later.

Matter’s new identity was a tour-de-force of mid-century modernism: restrained, colorful and sleek, the bars of color that graced the long, steel bodies of the train cars amplified their streamlined form. The logo debuted on a series of new lightweight trains, and their formal improvements (which required a series of trains, called EP-5’s, that had a new size and shape) were articulated by three wide horizontal stripes of color. “To add zest, the stripes would not taper and curve but would end in sharply raked angles,” notes train historian Joe Cunningham. “Roof cab and nose top would be black, noses would be white with a horizontal black diamond surrounding the headlight. A wave of the contrasting color would rise to a peak below the headlight diamond. On sides and ends, block letters would form an N above an H, with the colors set off from the background.”

Curiously, it was the color palette that proved difficult to resolve. In order to facilitate its selection, technicians at the GE plant produced two trains, one in canary yellow with black, and the other in a trio of white, black and red-orange. Matter chose the latter which, coincidentally, matched the red scarf, black coat and white gloves that the fashionably-attired Lucille McGinnis wore to the GE plant the very day the newly-painted trains were being presented. “Matter noted that yellow was fashionable but showed dirt,” Cunningham explains. “Mrs. McGinnis agreed, saying the red looked powerful.”

There are a couple of further things to say. The exaggerated slab serifs of Matter’s identity implicitly recall the mid 19C origins of the railroad. The design choice to work with pre-modern and serifed letterforms was in marked contrast to the prevailing typographic aesthetic of the mid-century, machine-age, modernity in the USA.

The engine livery also has an interestingly sharp, dazzle effect. This is  bit like the camouflage patterns developed for battleships during WW1. You can see the geometry clearly on the front of the can units.

Here’s a Matter cover design for Fortune magazine

Matter was also art director and photographer for the Eames Studio and for Knoll. I’ve posted before about the Eames Studio and their films.

Herbert Matter’s name has been in the news recently. The family has discovered a whole garage full of Jackson Pollock paintings.

This is the standard work on Matter at present. I believe that Kerry Purcell has been working on something more complete and up-to-date.

I also found an excellent model site, which is full of technical information about the New Haven Railroad in 1959.