Design at the railroad: Please get on – Auto & Mobil

What do the KM32, a kitchen appliance developed by Braun that was hardly missing in any kitchen in the 1970s and 1980s, and a folding seat from an S-Bahn train? Or a modern iPhone with the luggage rack on a long-distance train? “All of these things play an important role in many people’s everyday lives,” says Ursula Bartelsheim, curator at the DB Museum in Nuremberg. But it’s about more than that. What a train looks like, how comfortable a seat is, how much attention a well-designed advertising poster for a train service attracts – all of this is “an important factor for the success and acceptance of rail transport” says Bartelsheim. Together with colleagues, she designed the special exhibition “Design & Bahn” in Nuremberg. In it, the team not only shows the development of rail design in all its diversity, it is also about how all the designed objects shaped travel and the everyday life of passengers – and continue to shape them to this day.

Design on the train

For a long time, the design of the locomotives and wagons was in the hands of the technicians and developers. How a steam locomotive was constructed, where the boiler was located and the tender, or where and how the passengers could sit in the wagons – all of this resulted over many years and decades primarily from the requirements of the respective technology. Engineers and developers decided on design issues. “In the early days of the railroad, there was still no talk of design,” says Bartelsheim. The term did not appear in German rail traffic until after the Second World War.

But forerunners existed well before 1945: artists were involved early on in the design of luxurious touring carriages for princely rulers; Shortly after the turn of the century, the Saxon and Bavarian state railways commissioned the Munich architect Richard Riemerschmid to design the interior of all classes of through cars. In the twenties, with the merger of the various regional railways to form the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the focus was on standardizing the vehicle fleet.

In the 1930s, engineers in the USA, Germany and France carried out tests in the wind tunnel and developed streamlined steam locomotives and express railcars; the Nazis use the lavishly disguised vehicles specifically for their propaganda. The modern designed locomotives stand for progress and new beginnings – even though the train drivers and stokers complain that the streamlined cladding often causes problems in day-to-day operations. Under the angled sheet metal, it is difficult for them to get to the components that have to be constantly oiled and lubricated.

Finally, after the war, engineers from the newly founded Federal Railroad, together with experts from the Nuremberg rail vehicle manufacturer MAN, developed, among other things, the luxurious TEE diesel multiple unit (the abbreviation stands for “Trans Europ Express”). The train with its characteristic, rounded end car and the TEE lettering on the front becomes the “symbol of the young Federal Railroad”, as Bartelsheim puts it. Similar to the later ICE, with which the railroad wanted to compete with cars and airplanes from the 1980s onwards. The dark ribbon of windows in contrast to the light paintwork of the outer skin is characteristic of this feature. When the third generation of the ICE was developed in the mid-1990s, the engineers even had eight ICE 3 and ICE T wagons built as 1: 1 models in a factory hall in Poing near Munich. Both trains are intended to symbolize the departure of the Deutsche Bahn AG, formed from the West German Federal Railroad and the GDR Reichsbahn, into a new era, says Bartelsheim: “Never before and never again has Germany made so much effort to make design decisions for trains.”

Design on the train

Open detailed view

But it is not only the external appearance of locomotives and wagons that has shaped and continues to shape the everyday life of passengers – in fact, interior design decisions have an impact on comfort and wellbeing. For the “Rheingold” luxury train, for example, introduced in 1928, the Reichsbahn has several companies build wagons designed by artists. The interior furnishings are mainly based on bygone eras: the sophisticated, free-standing single armchairs in the first class, for example, are reminiscent of the furnishings of luxurious grand hotels from the Belle Époque. These comfortable armchairs, which offer plenty of space, are manufactured by the traditional Cologne furniture manufacturer Heinrich Pallenberg.

Open detailed view

Later on, train seats have almost nothing in common with home furniture – they have to fulfill many functions at the same time, such as individual adjustability or the ability to use electronics that you have brought with you. In addition, the designers have to take economic considerations into account: the narrower a seat is constructed, the more passengers can be accommodated in a car. When the railways introduced 4 new seats in the ICE in 2018, the complaints from passengers increased – in the end, even the Bundestag debated possible health risks for commuters. Couldn’t one have asked the users beforehand?

That’s exactly how it went at the beginning of the twenties: The Reichsbahn, which had just been founded at the time, is faced with the challenge of modernizing Berlin’s city, ring and suburban railways. New electric multiple units are to replace the old fleet. The Reichsbahner are starting a multi-year process to test new vehicles: six test trains with different door arrangements go on tour; Different variants are also being tried out for the seating in the interior, sometimes the seats are arranged horizontally, sometimes lengthways. The population is allowed to give their opinion. Various paint variants are also tested. In 1926, the Reichsbahn finally ordered more than 1200 “Stadtbahn” -type wagons; it was “the largest German series of railcars ever to be manufactured according to uniform characteristics,” as Bartelsheim put it. Reichsbahn General Director Julius Dorpmüller opts for a striking wine-red-ocher-yellow paint – an almost iconic wagon design is created, the main features of which are still used today on the Berlin S-Bahn.

Open detailed view

Design around the train

But at that time it was not enough for the Berlin S-Bahn with new multiple units. In the course of the modernization, many new buildings were built in the twenties: numerous new train stations, but also workshops and depots, rectifiers and substations for the supply of electricity. Many of these buildings have a clear, functional design language that has been freed from too much ornamentation – and thus shape the Berlin cityscape to this day.

The situation is similar, by the way, with the famous S-Bahn signet that was created by the Reichsbahn in Berlin at the beginning of the 1930s: a white S on a green background. Initially, however, this logo can still be seen on a gravestone-shaped background, only later does the round shape for the S-Bahn signet become established. This also clearly distinguishes it from the square logo of the subway, which is now widely used in many cities (white U on a blue background).

In the mid-1950s, the Bundesbahn also began to introduce its own font: the Bundesbahn-Futura. This is not only emblazoned on signposts and information boards, but also on posters and course books. In the eighties, the designers of the railway then developed a completely new wayfinding system, with a consistent systematization of information and the use of uniform pictograms – something similar also occurs with the Reichsbahn in the GDR. There, by the way, rail design is intensively promoted by the state: Because rail vehicle construction in the GDR is strongly export-oriented, the products should be able to assert themselves on the world market. The double-deck coaches manufactured in Görlitz have been among the biggest export hits for many years. These became established – albeit only after the political change in autumn 1989 – in many West German local transport networks. Today, they have become an integral part of the everyday life of many commuters.

The special exhibition “Design & Bahn” can be seen from October 1st to mid-June 2022 in the DB Museum in Nuremberg. More information on the Internet at www.dbmuseum.de.