Abstract

All Stations: A Journey Through 150 years. An exhibition held at the Science Museum, 22 May-27 September 1981. Accompanying publication All Stations: A Journey Through 150 Years of Railway History, translated from the French of JEAN DETHIER. Thames & Hudson, 1981. 184 pages, fully illustrated. £8.50. This widely-ranging pictorial exhibition, conceived with affection and imagination on the grand scale, brings railways to life and is a fitting tribute to a mode of travel which was once of such importance. It was devised and put together at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and, as one would expect, not the least of its merits is that it sees these bustling buildings through French eyes, even though the help of museum curators has been enlisted in Britain, Belgium, Holland and Italy, amongst other countries. In two of the sections (The Station: Strategic Area, and The Station in Politics) considerable use is made of wartime posters, 1914-18 troop trains and the development of little rural railway stations in France into major military centres behind the lines. There is a sad photograph of three railway tracks converging into one and leading through a solitary archway into Auschwitz concen- tration camp - and an even