Cinema car
Cinema cars (also: " film cars ") were passenger cars that were designed inside so that films could be shown there.
Such wagons were used for different purposes:
- for in-house training at the railways
- for presentations and in the context of exhibitions
- in long-distance trains for the entertainment of passengers
history
Such vehicles were used in the period when cinema was the main medium for showing moving images, i.e. from around the 1930s to the 1970s. The vehicles were rare, however, and only larger railroads had them. For the Europe-wide broad-gauge network planned by the National Socialists during World War II , cinema cars with 196 seats were even provided. The ability to play films on video recorders replaced the much more complex playback technology for cinema films and made own vehicles for showing films obsolete. In the late 1990s, for example, Israel Railways experimented with a “Midnight Special” between Haifa and Tel Aviv that carried a car in which videos were shown. But the experiment was unsuccessful. A video system was also in operation in some areas of the first-generation ICE . 5-inch LCD monitors were embedded in the backrests of the front seat. This service was abandoned as more and more travelers brought their own laptop and played their own films on it.
Stationary use
Large railroad administrations, such as the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) and British Rail (BR), kept cinema cars for in-house training and used them stationary for presentations on special occasions or at exhibitions. The BR maintained three such vehicles in the mid-1960s, two for in-house training, exhibitions and special occasions, and a third vehicle that could be rented by companies or organizers.
But that was too time-consuming for smaller railways. So waived Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) for economic reasons it.
In the GDR there were cinema cars that were operated by DEFA .
Use in long-distance trains
In Germany in the 1950s, the Deutsche Bundesbahn planned cinema cars, a project that did not materialize. The prognosis was that on average the wagons would only be used to a relatively low degree, but would have had to be carried on the train all the time.
In Italy , trains operated by Italo run cinema cars. This is always car no. 11, the end car of the part of the train that carries the "Smart" class (2nd class).
From 1988 to 2001 some sets of the Shinkansen series 0 for the San'yō Shinkansen ran a cinema car in Japan .
In Sweden , cinema cars have been used on the Narvik - Kiruna - Stockholm route for many years.
In the USA , cinema cars were used in some long-distance trains, which can be on the road for several days.
literature
- Julien Censier: La section centrale cinematografique de la Societé Nationale des Chemins de Fer / The film department of the French State Railways (SNCF) . In: The European Railway Movie. Special edition of the German film correspondence. Munich, August 1966, pp. 18–21 (19, 21)
- D. Potter: The British Railways Board Films Service. In: The European Railway Movie. Special edition of the German film correspondence. Munich, August 1966, pp. 21ff (23).
- Josef Otto Slezak: The distant signal is astonishing. Strange things from the railways around the world . Vienna 1952.
Individual evidence
- ^ HR Kurz, Josef A. Wiese: Communication facilities in the InterCity Express . In: Die Bundesbahn , 64, No. 10, 1988, ISSN 0007-5876 , pp. 937-944.
- ↑ Censier, Potter.
- ↑ Potter.
- ^ Ernst Schenker: The Swiss Federal Railroad Film Service . In: The European Railway Movie. Special edition of the German film correspondence. Munich, August 1966, p. 30.
- ↑ Tim Parks: Italy to the Fullest . Munich 2014. ISBN 978-3-88897-971-2 , p. 201.
- ↑ jst: Swedish night trains threatened . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International 12/2015, p. 622.
- ↑ Slezak.