Summary Of George Revill's Railway

In the first chapter in Railway, George Revill opens his volume on the history of the railway with a recounting on the associations between the landscape and the railway and the emergence of tourism geared to railroad travel . Revill traces this history from the establishment of the public steam-powered railway between Liverpool and Manchester which opened in 1830 to the proliferation of railroads in America , and due to the spread of this technology, greater travel distances became more accessible to the public. It is the start of a compression of space, new places were now made visible with much more ease than ever before and this had numerous repercussions for society at large, its relationship with the landscape, how it views technology, and how trade operates, all of which Revill delves into deeply. …show more content…
In his chapter on Railroads and Patent Furniture, a much different scale is addressed, that of the train interiors, their spatial arrangement, and their mechanics . Not only is the train made available to the public in North America in the mid-19th century as a vehicle to get from point A to point B, but they are made comfortable of all riders, regardless of what social class they are in, the design of the train cars themselves aspire to be comfortable to everyone for the duration of their trip. Gideon elaborates about this principle stating that ‘every person who travels is entitled to a minimum of comfort’ and compares it to other examples in Europe which developed for long distance travel for members of the public in the late 1800s . Gideon reasoned that the reason that comfort was accommodated