The concept was based on the speed that the new means of transport was able to achieve in that 19th century society. Local identities became charged with metropolitan meanings. One of the most important changes brought by the railway according to Schivelbusch is the annihilation of space and time that the railways made possible which drastically changed the people’s ideas about space and time. The travelers, the ordinary people therefore responded to the change brought by the railways and looked at the world weaved around them by railway journeys in a novel manner, creating new accounts of the world and forming new perceptions.

As Schivelbusch points out, the railways were a system for moving commodities and in most cases, these commodities were human beings. Therefore it is difficult to extract a solid recurring theme from this work, but the idea one gets that the author is trying to make the reader grasp is that the railway journey is a symbol of the commodification of the social, economic and cultural fabric of the west in the 19th century. In the book, Schivelbusch can be said to move freely from one aspect of railway travel to another, adding incrementally rather than developmentally to the reader’s knowledge. The book addresses many different themes surrounding the introduction of the railway into the western lifestyle. There were even proposals to pull trains by using cogwheels on serrated rails. Schivelbusch also mentions some of the many novel ways of pulling trains that were suggested by people in the 19th century and people’s perceptions about how these gigantic mechanical monsters were being pulled by that steam engine.

Schivelbusch then moves on to discuss the issues revolving around the coal production in Restoration France and its effects on the viability of trains and hence influence on aspects of rail travel. However, the debate over the Corn Laws was a crossroads in the transition of the Britain from a feudalist society, to a more modern, industrial one. The import tariffs ostensibly designed to “protect” British farmers and landowners against competition from cheap foreign grain imports was basically displaying the power of the British aristocracy. The author then proceeds to the effect of the Corn Laws on the economics of animal power and how it affected trains. This was no different from the shift in the shipbuilding industry which also employed steel as the technology developed and the experts learnt to use it. These practices of using wood were slowly but surely substituted by the more durable and stronger steel in the 18th century as the methods of construction developed and the advantages of steel were recognized. He begins by the talking of the methods of construction employed in the 18th century using wood, both in the United States and Europe. Schivelbusch begins by providing a history of the railroad and how it developed during the years of the 19th century. As such, this book by Wolfgang Schivelbusch is a considerable step at establishing the important part played by railways in the creation of what can be called an industrial consciousness, a prime example of the interaction between technology and culture. The manner in which this rapid inclusion of new mechanical advancement influenced the thought of the people in Europe and North America is astounding. Their dominant inclusion into the daily lives of the people and the changes brought by them were inescapable. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.” The sentence in its essence signifies the marked importance that the railways occupied in the hearts and minds of the people in the 19th century. Foster once wrote, “Railway terminals are our gates to the glorious and the unknown.

Schivelbusch railway journey