Even a new technology – and you may have noticed this if you have switched from a paper system to an electronic one in your working life – does not start out to realise its own potential but instead seeks to replicate what already exists. The violence, disruption, overthrow of traditional approaches, alien discipline and structure, all experienced by workers in industrial workplaces was shared in by the travel experience of rail travellers.Īt the same time as all this newness existed there was also no blank slate, no white page. Schivelbusch tells us that rail travel was for many people their only experience of an industrial process.
And that distinction is one of the points of the book. Unless you are in the USA, in which case you are shipped. It builds up steam towards the industrialisation of travel, with the traveller as product, delivered to their destination. Long enough for others to have drawn from it and for its messages to have passed through many stations. It helped to remember that this book has been rattling around since 1977. What this is, is a cultural history, culture very broadly understood, of the railway.Īt first everything seemed so familiar that I could hardly perceive the insight. Since I read this book with twinkling eyes and a smile on my face I tenderly recommend it to other readers, at least those who are interested in trains.