bahn-verspätungsschal

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake with a bit of an update from Colossal, we learn about a loyal but frustrated rail commuter who, much like Andean quipu or the zealous knitter who got carried away with the Doctor’s scarf, documented delays experienced in coloured wool bands during her daily trip (two a day—round-trip, hin- und züruck) between Moosburg an der Isar and München, which should take approximately thirty minutes on regional trains—once infrastructure repairs and diverting to buses meant that long interruptions became the norm.
Her one hundred-twenty centimetre long handiwork (reminiscent of a DNA test result in the rawest form) garnered a lot of attention after her daughter, a prominent journalist and news editor, posted it on social media. The knitter decided the auction off the “train-delay-scarf” for the charity Bahnhofs Mission, an outreach and assistance programme for the homeless, transient and precarious based in train stations, raising several thousand euro. Claudia Weber, the creator, is working on a new shawl for 2019.

atchison, topeka and santa fe

These portrayals of urban rail routes that are a distant memory as Underground strip maps (see also here and here) are a really striking aesthetic choice on the part of draughtsman Jake Berman that makes us at the same time pine for the amenities of the past and appreciate what we still have in Germany and the robust public transportation network that we have here. Do you have memories of a similar service in your town that is no longer there?  Check out more superannuated streetcar and train lines showcased on Atlas Obscura at the link up top.

durchfährt

Being very well acquainted with the city (check the label for Saxony for more), we enjoyed indulging in this film artefact, courtesy of TYWKIWDBI, that delivers a whistle-stop tour of Leipzig by street car (Straßenbahn) from 1931 and did recognise several streets and landmarks in passing. As the source recommends, use your imagination to create an immersive experience as you transverse the city at speed.

great railway journeys

Via Dark Roasted Blend’s weekly Link Latte, we find ourselves directed to the beautifully curated collection of vintage and antique European rail travel posters from Armand Massonet. Categorised and with a bit of provenance that allows one to date the ephemera and learn more, there’s a wealth of resources to discover. We especially liked the section dedicated to overnight expresses and sleeper cars (a less common luxury nowadays)—including automobile hauling service. The pictorial train map section, like this Bildkarte of Austria, is also definitely worth browsing through.

sonderfahrt

Produced by French manufacturer Alstom, the rail route between the towns of Cuxhaven and Buxtehude is now being serviced by the world’s first pair of hydrogen (Wasserstoff) powered commercial locomotives.
Capable of travelling upwards of one thousand kilometres per fuelling at speeds comparable to the old diesel trains they are replacing, this demonstration project—a particularly practical one for numerous commuters (Pendler) that travel between these cities—emits only steam and water in its exhaust and represents just the first stage of a planned, extended network across Europe.

rolling stock

Via Londonist, we are treated to the handiwork of Matthew Sommerville who has made a real-time map of the trains moving through the London Underground. Each yellow dot represents a carriage winding its way from station to station, drawing its telemetry from the same public data sets that inform time-tables and station information boards, and will at a click reveal more information about its route and one can toggle between geographic and schematic projections.

6x6

parkour: flip book style animation from Serene Teh

hollywoodland: a look at the Goldstein residence of Beverly Hills, featured in Charlie’s Angels and The Big Lebowski

kgb vs kfc: the football that Putin presented Trump does in fact have a chip in it but is probably harmless

vice squad: the sting that led to the arrest of Stormy Daniels was a premeditated set-up

regnal periods: a visually sharp presentation of Roman emperors by year

land transport authority: an elegant map of Singapore’s metro-system

streamlining

Our gratitude to Nag on the Lake for introducing us to the Franco-American industrial design pioneer Raymond Loewy whose multidisciplinary vision informs a magnitude of iconic brands and defining how form follows function.
Among his contributions are the interior of the Boeing Stratoliner, various locomotives, coaches, the Sears Coldspot refrigerator, the Schick electric razor, the Lincoln Continental, a jukebox, a version of the Coca-Cola bottle and the Coke can, Lucky Strikes cigarette packaging, subway cars plus the interior and living space of Skylab and the Concorde. Additionally, Loewy created logos for TWA, SPAR, Exxon, Shell and many others. Go over to Nag on the Lake at the link up top to see an insightful 1979 CBS television interview with Loewy, dubbed by the press as the Man who Shaped America.

rallye und rhön-zügle

For certain holiday week-ends, the historic train station in the town of Fladungen (where we’ve often visited in the past for their now discontinued classic car shows but worth a visit any time) will reanimate its fleet (two) of steam locomotives (built in 1924 by the firm Krauss-Maffei in Munich and the only ones of their kind still in operation) and antique Reichsbahn passenger cars for fun little short-haul whistle-stop tours.
We boarded for a journey to Ostheim and back, a stretch of road that we were familiar with but never quite from this perspective and pace, plus it was interesting to see the feats of practised engineering and mechanical dexterity that went into pulling of the operation and prompted one to reflect on what a revolutionary marvel that such an engine would have been when it first went into service.
It was a funny coincidence that we were best acquainted with Fladungen through an auto show that was no longer held and went next to see an assortment of classic cars reach the finish line (we were not sure who was in the pole-position but I guess it just counted if one could finish intact) and present themselves for inspection in the Kurpark of Bad Kissingen down the road a bit.
The storied spa town has been hosting the Sachs Franken Classic since 2000 in conjunction with Bad Kissingen’s twelve hundredth year since its first documented mentioned and the race, sponsored by ZF (Zahnradfabrik—Gear Factory—but also a mostly-owned subsidiary of Zeppelin Foundation, a manufacturer of automotive parts) runs through the region’s forests and vineyards, and it was inspiring in both instances that with maintenance and care such artefacts can remain active parts of the community.

rolling stock

The departed pair of graphic design pioneers Massimo and Lella Vignelli bequeathed their papers—some sixty years-worth of drawings, layouts and logo ideas, to the Rochester Institute of Technology, where a single archivist is discovering and documenting previously unknown treasures with regularity. Among the latest striking finds includes these circa 1973 proposals for an abstract diagrammatic map for Washington DC’s Metro system. The authorities ultimately opted for another concept but did incorporate some of Massimo’s ideas. Be sure to visit City Lab at the link up top to learn more about the artists and their legacy and to discover more artefacts.

우정의 다리, мост дружбы

With a working-group being appointed to explore fording a second link between Russia and North Korea to supplement the Friendship Bridge—the sole crossing built in 1959 to allow train service over the Tumen River by special arrangement only and notably since last year a fibre optic cable, Calvert Journal correspondent Tom Masters candidly shares his railway journal from Pyongyang to Vladivostok. The account makes for an interesting read and the trip is illustrated with a lot of photographs. One of the only other points of entrance and egress for the country is the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge over the Yalu River, originally spanned by the Japanese Imperial Army when it occupied north-eastern China and the Korean peninsula during WWII, which allows both trains and cars but no pedestrian traffic.

mind the gap

Drawn from a variety of sources, we really enjoyed perusing this curated gallery of vintage London Underground posters and advertising campaigns in order to boost ridership.
Many of the brightest and boldest examples date from the 1920s and from the studios of graphic designer Horace Taylor but the collection (with many we’ve never encountered before) spans the whole of the twentieth century in all styles and is definitely worth checking out.  Over the ages, I think London has done an outstanding job in promoting public transportation, the hallmark of sound and convenient infrastructure being that people choose to take it rather than strive to avail themselves of other means.

standseilbahn

Residents of the car-free Alpine village of Stoos are now able to make the steep but direct, time-saving descent into the valley and the town of Schwyz in central Switzerland. Construction and planning of this stretch of funicular railway took over fourteen years and there are special gyroscopic carriages on the locomotive to ensure that passengers remain at a comfortable, upright position even when the gradient surpasses ninety degrees. Be sure to check out the link above for more information and some video footage of what must be a thrilling ride.

öffentlichen personennahverkehr

Big Think’s regular feature on the cartographic arts is showcasing this 1927 aesthetic marvel that illustrates not only the location of stations and stops for underground and surface trains (see more on metro maps here, here, here and here) in Berlin but also shows the volume of passengers by the relative thickness of the pastel coloured blocks. From a data visualisation perspective, it looks as if this sort of chart had the potential to become crowded rather quickly—like the high-traffic areas at the city centre and perhaps was rejected analysts as not the most effective means for imparting this sort of information—but nonetheless this sleek and clean map has an arresting quality. Be sure to check out Big Think for more on the map’s provenance and context plus other interesting and engrossing items.

utilidors

By way of a new documentary that covers its history and the vision that was far ahead of its time, City Lab introduces us to the space-age utopia that was never realised, a modular, scalable settlement that could accommodate a quarter of a million individuals, conceived by geophysicist and oceanographer Athelstan Spilhaus in the mid-1960s and designated Minnesota Experimental City (MXC).  Aspiring to what EPCOT was originally meant to be Spilhaus’ ambitious plans anticipated the rise of working and shopping remotely and was centred around recycling, energy efficiency and generally minimising mankind’s environmental footprint.
Prohibiting internal combustion vehicles, the compound was to make use of a novel, dual-carriage mass transit network that addressed the last-mile conundrum that continues to vex public transportation and discourages people from taking the bus. MXC, however, proved too revolutionary and support began to flag once Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr (a fellow Minnesotan and avid cheerleader for the project along with architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller) lost his bid for the US presidency to Richard Nixon and locals began picketing the proposed site. It’s sad to think that such a bold departure from toxic urbanisation seems just as unachievable today as it did all those decades ago—and even less so in some places.

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brick and mortar: the trajectory of on-line retailer Amazon very closely mirrors that of Sears and Roebuck  
corporate sponsorship: former London mayor tried to secure funds for the Thames Garden Bridge by allowing Apple to plop a store in the middle of the river

choo-choo: an incredibly charming hand-drawn train journey animation, via Waxy

songun: striking and iconographic ephemera from North Korea

tree of life: a look at how many species and varieties that each plant and animal emoji represents, via Kottke

ama: highlights from an interview with Monty Python alumnus John Cleese

6x6

1995: a retrospective of the first five web applications that informed the internet as we know it, via Waxy

travelling matte: a thirty kilometre long art project for train passengers between Jena and Naumburg

bellerophon: incredible Roman mosaic discovered by amateur archaeologists in the Cotswolds

lay of the land: different proposals for visualising maps and daily journeys through the lens of time

mona lisas and mad hatters: other Elton John songs that Dear Leader uses to refer to world leaders

phase shift: pumping air through sand makes it behave like a liquid, first spotted here  

objets trouvés

Thanks to the forever marvellous Nag on the Lake for directing our attention to the romantic and indulgently thoughtful Parisian institution of the city’s central Lost and Found Bureau.
The repository for mislaid personal items collected from the metro and museum networks or turned in by caring individuals that hope possessor and object can be reunited has a long history, sourced by to the reign of Napoleon I, just a spare two decades after the Revolution that radically redefined the sense of ownership. Whereas under the feudal Ancien Régime, lost property of tenets generally reverted to the landlord—and still is in Anglo-Saxon legal frameworks what with possession being nine-tenths of the law (just consider this place where Hoggel resides), finders were no longer necessarily keepers and the right to ownership was enshrined as a fundamental and inalienable one. The curation of the collection and compassion of the staff is rather incredible. The dignity of an individual is of course greater than the sum of his or her things, but I think the greatness of one’s character comes through with these intimate, emotional reunions and allowing things to shift from expendable to indispensable.

4x4

demon-haunted world: the inscrutable internet of things conspires to keep us from knowing its secrets

box car: the machine-readable bar-code had its origins with freight trains

forge and foundry: the creation and destruction of one of the world’s loveliest typefaces, Doves Press

mechnotherapie: gym-culture in the late nineteenth century

little ben or gmt +1

With its bigger, more famous big brother having gone silent for the next few years, perhaps residents are paying more notice to the clock tower’s commemorative copy on a traffic island by Vauxhall Bridge near Victoria Station.
The cast iron replica was first built in 1892 and subsequently de-commissioned, re-commissioned and moved venues several times. A rather unsettling design choice—especially for an already harried commuter rush to catch a train connection—is that the time-piece is permanently set to Day-Light Savings Time, so that for five months out of the year, it’s displaying the wrong hour. The original thought behind this rather baffling decision seems lost, but is now explained as a gesture of Franco-British solidarity, with a rhyming couplet titled Apology for Summer Time: “My hands you may retard or may advance / My heart beats true for England as well as France,” a reference to how it shows the correct continental time when it behind domestically during the winter months.