Motion Pictures: An Analysis of Railway Timetables and Maps

That time and space lie at the heart of railway culture is manifest in the degree to which temporal and spatial representations, in the form of clocks, watches and maps, which are the subjects of analysis in this chapter, are ubiquitous features of the linguistic and numeric landscapes of stations and trains. This is because there is a need for them to be consulted regularly by mobile communities, by the travelling public and railway employees. It is noted that there has been a shift from analogue to digital modes of information representation. Thus large display boards that were mounted in stations and which once ‘recorded’ the arrival and departure of trains, and whose capacity to store temporal and spatial information is analysed, have been replaced by digital, screen based indicator boards. Fully automated, they are yet one more reflection of the fact that more and more of rail information, has been delegated to technologies. Like spatial information, as represented in rail maps, which are also analysed in the chapter, timetables are now available on-line, at home, away from station environments, on customised apps.

Keywords: Apps, cartograms, electronic indicator boards, railway maps, space, station clocks, time globalisation, timetables.