Abstract
This is the latest book in Reaktion’s Objekt series; other titles include ‘Factory’, ‘School’ and ‘Ship’. The purpose of the series is to ‘explore a range of types – buildings, products, artefacts – that have captured the imagination of modernist designers, makers and theorists’ (p. 2). Railway aims to rethink the ways in which an industry has impacted upon culture, technology, landscape and popular imagination. It does this through its five chapters. The first, ‘Nature, Culture and the Train Landscape’, maps the arrival and integration of the industry into the modernizing landscape. It shows the way this rude technology is quickly subsumed into the established landscape. Chapter 2, ‘The Machine Ensemble and the Nation State’, examines the relationship between the modern state and the railways as a complex organization, in particular the way the industry makes the modern political, social and imperial state possible. The third chapter, ‘Journeys, Stories and Everyday Lives’, looks at the way the railway touches and shapes passengers, workers and observers. The penultimate chapter, ‘Moving Objects: Stations, Locomotives and the Arts of Commerce’, is a fascinating account of the aesthetics of railway travel and its material object. Again we see that way in which railways have embedded themselves so deeply in to world culture while their technologically useful life may well have lasted for only a few decades. In his final chapter – ‘Entrainment: Tracks to a Railway Ecology’ – Revill examines contemporary societies’ relationship to the industry. The railway is simultaneously viewed as the environmental answer to the challenges of modernity whilst at the same time seen at the heart of its problems. Revill is a social and historical geographer and this book bears a heavy imprint of contemporary human geography. Its focus and range is very wide and impressive, covering issues such as ecology, the nation-state, the railway workforce and passengers as well as its material culture. Revill’s book holds in tension the railway as simultaneously a product of modernity and an up-rooter of tradition, whilst at the same time recognizing its role in creating a nostalgic vision of the national past. Railway draws on evidence from around the globe, showing the industry’s importance both to the developed metropolitan states as well as the objects of their imperial desire.
Railway is an interesting addition to the voluminous field of books on the industry. Indeed the publishing on railways is as old as the industry itself, with titles ranging from ‘rail porn’ (photo books for rail enthusiasts), through amateur history to academic tomes. Railway represents what could be seen as the cultural turn in studies of the industry. This is a recognition that the industry and those who work in it or use its services need to be understood through new approaches and evidence. Revill draws on an impressive range of sources: literary, filmic and visual. These are woven in to a complex image of the industry and thus form what could be thought of as a new cultural railway history. Revill’s book owes a debt to the pioneering work of Wolfgang Schivelbusch in his 1986 book The Railway Journey, but Railway goes beyond Schivelbusch’s work and draws on much of the scholarship stimulated by that ground-breaking if sociologically neglected work.
While Railway is a very impressive and useful book, it is perhaps limited and constrained by its length and the pressure of the Objekt series of which it forms a part. The problem for this reader at least is that we are presented here – and this is no less true of the other books in the series – with a whistle-stop tour through a mass of cultural material without really feeling very deeply informed. This made me think about who Reaktion conceive of as the audience for its products. For anyone conversant with the railway industry many of these references will be familiar. It is true that Revill does a wonderful job of synthesis of the strands of evidence which rarely figure together. Perhaps the idea is that these books are the starting point for a slower journey through this material, that the series is superficial rather than in-depth. I was left wanting a more considered excavation than could be accomplished here. The book will be a very useful departure point for general readers as well as those interested in the cultural aspects of a modern industry. It presents the reader with a valuable imaginative reading of a taken-for-granted technology and places it in a very deep historical context. Like other Reaktion publications, it is lavishly illustrated with some beautiful colour reproductions.