“The airplane is the symbol of the new age .  A new state of modern conscience. A new plastic vision. A new aesthetic. "

Welcome back to the second season of Talking Modernism, and the first of a 2-part series on Streamline Moderne, the style that is so evocative of Depression era  America.  In this episode I'll be talking about the glamorous world of train travel in the 1930s, and the ground-breaking Pioneer Zephyr,  the first of the streamliner trains.

To explore further :

• Wikipedia on Pioneer Zephyr 
• Book Shafer& Welsh, "Streamliners - History of a Railroad Icon", MBI Publishing, 1997
• Article on the economics of rail travel in America 
• Article on railway dining 
• Wikipedia on the Shienenzeppelin 
• Article on the Fliegender Hamburger train
• Film of the 1938 20th Century Limited:  the most beautiful train ever made? 
• Photos of Mossehaus by Erich Mendelsohn
• Article on the Universum Cinema, also by Mendelsohn 
• PDF copy of Aircraft  by Le Corbusier, 1935
• 1934 film The Silver Streak