 We know
today that building a train line across
Africa would have
posed less of a risk
than investing funds with a reputable New
York investment bank.
— German Federal President,
Horst Köhler, Berlin-Address, 24. March
2009
During the
last quarter of the 19th century, the fast
expansion of the railway-network has been
part of economic and industrial growth;
it played a key-role for
industrialisation. Now it was possible to
explore far away regions and to exploit
their economies. The need for capital in
order to construct railways did force
co-operation between the industrial and
the banking sectors. Thus, railways
became the symbol for imperialist
development of a nation and —
according to Lenin — the „vivid
graduated scale of the development of
world-trade and of the
middle-class-democratic
civilisation.“
— wikipedia
19  The train
with its uncomfortable handling of time
and its uncomfortable handling of space
does bring back old-fashioned curiosity
for details, sharpens the attention for
the environment close by, for everything
which is passing in front of the window.
— Tiziano Terzani
In 1837, Sir Isaac
Pitman introduced in Great Britain a
method which allowed to note, by hand,
the phonetically flow of the spoken word
in English language, using strokes and
dots. For the first time, it was possible
to document public speeches accurately.
The system was improved permanently and
adapted for fifteen languages.
Introduction of battery-driven
pocket-recorders superseded the use of
this system by secretaries and reporters.
From 1966 onwards, „Pitman’s
Shorthand“ lost its meaning.
— omniglot
Theories of
conspiracies will be put
aside immediately, because they are
coming out of the spinning mill of people
who suffer from lively imagination. I am
of different opinion. We are living in an
age where prognosis is based on collected
data. When it comes to theories of
conspiracies — imagine — facts
would be separated from presumptions and
imputations, and prognosis would be based
on verified facts only; then a couple of
dirty tricks would look differently in
history-books.
— Gert Flegeskamp
Pointsman: Klaus
Juergen Schmidt
© KJS / 2009
The
pointsman's mission:
In
every big railway-network, you will find
uncoupled carriages, their load missing.
One task of the railway’s pointsman
is to trace such uncoupled carriages and
to guide them back via properly pointed
rail-switches to an orderly line-up.
Almost every text you are going to read
is based on authentic quotes found during
a journey through the world of published
word — in books, in journals, on the
World Wide Web — there, however,
uncoupled from the course of time.
Such quotes have been recovered and
brought in line in a meaningful new way
by me, the pointsman — and you can
trace all quotes online.
On the rolling stage of the
TAZARA-Express, reconstruction takes
place of a historic timetable
as framed by global pointsmen whilst
playing their world-game.
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