Between the Past and the Future

?I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times (…)“.

Indeed, we are but we are not the first to do so, as the statement above is from 1898. One great place to experience other extraordinary times is the National Railway Museum in York.

A visit there is a valuable lesson in innovation and change within society.

The invention of the steam engine increased travel speeds by 12. This meant that the world became 12 x smaller. But even more importantly, we had machines taking us forwards for the first time. Just imagine the impact this had on our grandparent’s lives.

Looking at those very early trains at the museum, it is fascinating to see that the first coaches look like the horse-drawn carriage. This renewal is a pattern we see almost every day: the old world copied and pasted into the new.

Above: Change vs. Copy&Past the old world into the new world.

A current example of this is business exhibitions. They have now become “digital” thanks to the pandemic, taking place on Zoom or Teams etc rather than in person. This seems somewhat temporary however, we have not (yet) adopted the idea of digital exhibitions to be the way of the future, as we are still far from recognising the full potential of the digital environment.

The museum highlights the wonderful piece of history that was the steam engine, showing how streamlined steam trains became; the stunning Mallard locomotive achieved the world speed record for steam at 126 miles per hour in 1938.

But the rise of the diesel engine saw the beginning of the end for steam, despite diesel locomotives being slower than their steam counterparts when they first came into service.

The change between the two technologies was tremendous and the steam industry did not immediately stop producing “old fashioned” locomotives. The very last steam engine, the Evening Star, was finished in 1960 and spent only 5 years in service. It would be wrong to blame the engineers of the time for continuing to build steam engines, knowing that diesel was the future, however.

How would we handle such a huge change to our daily life?

Steam was the heartbeat of this generation; it was everything… and to think today we know steam only from ironing. This was a disruption to normal service – and a very interesting time indeed!

BTW: Many of the first diesel engines were produced in Switzerland – an industry now long gone and replaced by the service sector.