The commercial cultures of Britain's railways 1872-1977

商业力量在塑造人们对个人流动性的态度和预期方面发挥了很大作用。即使像运输一样基本的功能，长期以来也部分地基于它赋予购买者的社会区别进行营销。运输公司在开发其服务的令人向往的营销时认识到了这一点，提出了本身可能适销对路的公司形象和品牌，并设计了车辆、制服和旅行设施等产品，以向潜在客户投射有吸引力的形象。铁路是第一个以这种方式工作的运输行业，不仅为后来的竞争对手提供了模式，也为许多其他类型的企业提供了模式。到了1900年代，英国所有的主要铁路都采取了措施，旨在“鼓励那些本来不会这样做的人乘火车旅行，鼓励那些愿意少旅行的人多旅行”。1918年后的道路竞争加剧了他们的努力，铁路的商业语言越来越多地呼应了今天人们熟悉的“客户”一词，例如，经常取代20世纪20年代的“乘客”。在英国，铁路也是从以文字为基础的营销形式向更具视觉导向的营销形式转变的领头羊，在19世纪末，铁路广泛使用图画海报，然后从20世纪初开始，广泛使用照片和电影。而且，尽管政治和民众的偏见与之相反，但从20世纪60年代中期开始，国有化的铁路在开发诸如英国铁路、城际铁路和时髦的高速列车等品牌方面处于世界领先地位。如今，私有化的火车运营公司只是采用了同样方法的更复杂的版本。这个项目加深了我们对铁路如何以及为什么开发这种技术的了解，帮助我们理解更多旅行的商业必要性在英国社会中是多么根深蒂固。它将使国家铁路博物馆能够开发一个展览，展示铁路的商业文化如何融入英国文化、社会和商业历史的更广泛的历史，并提供有关这些文化是如何建立的，并通过各种媒体向潜在游客提供的详细知识。这项研究探索了这段历史上的三个关键时期：19世纪末，米德兰铁路通过为大众带来低成本旅行，预见到了瑞安航空的革命；两次世界大战之间，大西部铁路等公司通过将传统与现代相结合，成功地与公路运输竞争长途运输；以及后比京现代化的城际铁路革命。对于每一个时期和业务，该项目都会探索国家铁路博物馆的藏品，以绘制铁路向公众推销旅行想法的整体方式。它还更深入地分析了在每个时期只有一种特别创新的媒介所做出的贡献：关于米德兰的海报和其他视觉材料；关于大西部的宣传照片；以及英国铁路特快列车的工业设计。展览的结果将是一场庆祝英国铁路一个鲜为人知的方面的创造性的展览，同时也发出了一个警告，即在一个交通运输(包括铁路运输)日益成为全球变暖的重要贡献者、运力限制对我们似乎永无止境的个人出行欲望构成越来越大挑战的世界里，这种做法是否可持续。

Commercial forces have a large part to play in shaping attitudes and expectations about personal mobility. Even as basic a function as transport has long been marketed partly on the basis of the social distinction it confers on purchasers. Transport companies recognize this when they develop the aspirational marketing of their services, come up with corporate images and brands which may themselves be marketable, and design the likes of vehicles, uniforms and travel facilities to project an attractive images to potential customers. The railways were the first transport industry to work in this way, providing a model not only for their later competitors but also many other kinds of business. By the 1900s all the major British railways had adopted measures designed 'to induce people, who would otherwise not do so, to travel by rail, and to encourage such as would travel a little, to travel more'. Road competition after 1918 intensified their efforts, and the railways' commercial language increasingly echoed that familiar today with the term 'customer', for example, often replacing 'passenger' from the 1920s. The railways were also leaders in the shift from text-based to more visually orientated forms of marketing in Britain, with their widespread use in the late-19th century of pictorial posters and then, from the early 20th, of photographs and films. And, despite political and popular prejudices to the contrary, the nationalized railway was from the mid-1960s a world leader in developing brands such as 'British Rail' and Inter-City and the stylish High Speed Train. Today's privatized Train Operating Companies simply employ more sophisticated versions of the same methods. This project deepens our knowledge of how and why the railways developed such techniques, helping us to understand just how entrenched in British society are the commercial imperatives to travel more. It will enable the National Railway Museum to develop an exhibition that shows how the railways' commercial cultures fits into the wider history of British cultural, social and business history, and offering detailed knowledge of how these were built up and delivered to potential travellers through a wide range of media. The research explores three crucial periods in this history: the late-19th century, when the Midland Railway anticipated the Ryanair revolution in aviation by bringing in low-cost travel for the masses; the inter-war years when companies like the Great Western Railway successfully competed with road transport for long-distance traffic by marrying tradition with modernism; and the Inter-City revolution of the modernizing, post-Beeching railway. For each of these periods and businesses, the project explores collections at the National Railway Museum to map the totality of ways in which the railways sold the idea of travel to the public. It also analyses in more depth the contribution made by just one particularly innovative medium in each of these periods: posters and other visual material on the Midland; publicity photographs on the Great Western; and the industrial design of express trains on British Rail. The outcome will be an exhibition that celebrates the inventiveness of a little-appreciated aspect of Britain's railways whilst also sounding a warning note about whether such practices are sustainable in a world in which transport - including that by rail - is an increasingly important contributor to global warming, and where constraints on capacity pose ever greater challenges to our seemingly insatiable desire for personal mobility.