|
Post by Swampirella on May 18, 2020 11:12:44 GMT
As I was about to buy a copy of this, I discovered it at archive under the long-winded title "Journey Into Fear and Other Great Stories of Horror On The Railways". Googling either title seems to be the easiest way to find it on the site rather than searching the site itself.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2020 11:39:09 GMT
As I was about to buy a copy of this, I discovered it at archive under the long-winded title "Journey Into Fear and Other Great Stories of Horror On The Railways". Googling either title seems to be the easiest way to find it on the site rather than searching the site itself. "Journey Into Fear and Other Great Stories of Horror On The Railways" was an instant remainder edition - do such things still exist? Here's the hardcover original. Richard Peyton [ed.] - The Ghosts Now Standing on Platform One (Souvenir, 1990) Blurb: In the distance, a train can be heard approaching, travelling along a track where no train has run for years ... On the platform of a deserted station, a ghostly figure waits in vain ... A disused signal-box is manned by a mysterious railwayman in old-fashioned uniform ... Year after year, on a certain date, a train and its passengers re-enact the moments of a fatal crash ...
More than any other form of transport, the railway has attracted ghosts. For more than a hundred years tales have been told of ghost trains, haunted stations. phantom railwaymen and unearthly passengers. Even with the coming of high-speed diesel locomotives and underground railways criss-crossing the big cities of the world, the legends have continued in both fact and fiction. The historical records of the railways include numerous accounts of these phantoms, and they in turn have inspired a whole genre of fictional tales, from the strange to the horrific, written by some of the world's greatest story-tellers. Some of the best of these, ranging from Rudyard Kipling and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham and William Nolan, have been gathered together in this unique collection, intermingled with true accounts of railway hauntings from both sides of the Atlantic. Illustrated with atmospheric engravings, this feast of the supernatural offers hours of spooky enjoyment. After reading it, no railway journey will ever seem quite the same again.Whoever is responsible for sid engravings is shamefully unaccredited, but here are two examples for those of us who like that kind of thing. Written content same as that of the Futura paperback.
|
|
|
Post by samdawson on Nov 21, 2020 11:49:41 GMT
Might the engravings have been lifted from the Illustrated London Post or a similar contemporary publication? They have that look
|
|
|
Post by Shrink Proof on Nov 21, 2020 22:24:55 GMT
They're not quite the Illustrated London News type. They look to me like modern engravings done in a very close approximation to that style. The one of the pile of wrecked wagons is closer to it. The viaduct image is a little too "soft focus" for ILN or that type of thing. ILN images often had backgrounds made up of hundreds of parallel, very fine horizontal lines, as in the sky and the ground in this image:-
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Nov 21, 2020 23:21:27 GMT
Beautiful image Dr Shrink. Isn't that a steel engraving?
cheers, Hel
|
|
|
Post by Shrink Proof on Nov 22, 2020 7:31:46 GMT
Beautiful image Dr Shrink. Isn't that a steel engraving? cheers, Hel Er, sorry, no idea if it's a steel engraving. To me, it's just a picture. But then, I'm from Manchester, so subtlety isn't my strong suit. The picture itself is the railway accident at Arlesey in Bedfordshire in 1876. A freight train derailed and then, before the debris could be cleared, an express, travelling in the opposite direction, ploughed into the wreckage. The driver, fireman and 3 passengers on the express were killed.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Nov 22, 2020 14:52:59 GMT
Ye gods what a horrible accident! When I looked at it, all I thought I was seeing was a huge mess but portrayed with exquisite attention to detail.
I imagine there were ghosts wandering about as a result of that day for years... perhaps even still today.
H.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Nov 22, 2020 17:57:51 GMT
Beautiful image Dr Shrink. Isn't that a steel engraving? cheers, Hel Er, sorry, no idea if it's a steel engraving. To me, it's just a picture. But then, I'm from Manchester, so subtlety isn't my strong suit. The picture itself is the railway accident at Arlesey in Bedfordshire in 1876. A freight train derailed and then, before the debris could be cleared, an express, travelling in the opposite direction, ploughed into the wreckage. The driver, fireman and 3 passengers on the express were killed. Is it documented how much such artists got paid for their work? I guess such pictures were not held in any regard back then, were the same as our press-photos of yesterday, disposable weekday art. I always marvel at the details of such pictures. It is quite a fascinating topic. Were the artist at the place of the event, doing sketches for the later pictures, working against a deadline? Or are these just made up, taken from eyewitness accounts? Were all those book illustrations of the time just a side-line? The more I think about this, the more I am interested in a account about this (seemingly?) forgotten chapter. I would like to think that you learn such things in art-history at the university, but who knows.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Nov 22, 2020 19:50:10 GMT
Underneath the print in the ILN it says "From a sketch by a passenger" - which of course may or may not actually be true. I've seen similar examples of other railway accidents from the same time period saying "From a sketch by a witness" - just how detailed these sketches would have been I'm not sure (if they even existed at all). I can't imagine anyone doing this in the immediate aftermath, though possibly some time afterwards, maybe if they were asked to give a rough sketch of where things were by someone (like a newspaper reporter) who was interviewing them. But the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to thinking this could have just been something that was added to make the illustration appear to be accurate, when it was really just a good old "artist's impression".
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 15, 2022 10:56:07 GMT
|
|