The Railway Study Association was formed in 1909, and commissioned a book to commemorate its centenary. The book, 'A century of change', is one which I have just finished and found fascinating.

The underlying message - change is constant, and will continue - is hardly surprising.

The book illustrates this by reference to themes pervading presentations made at its regular meetings - presentations usually made by senior figures in the railway or transport industry. These are enlivened by the presence at these meetings of other figures in the transport industry, senior and junior, who are clearly interested in their profession.

It makes the point that the decade between 1960 and 1970 was the one where change really accelerated, where it was really apparent.

And this was my railway. I joined BR in 1963 (the family firm - my father worked on the railways for 45 years, as did one of his brothers), and reading this book really took me back across a long and fascinating career.

But it's not just nostalgia. There is serious stuff in this book: it is well worth reading.

And one thing which almost unintentionally emerges is the danger of the loss of corporate memory. In 1970 the name of the organisation was changed from Railway Students Association to Railway Study Association. The book is vague about why, merely commenting that the word student had negative connotations around that time. So it did: student riots, revolts, sit-ins and so on were certainly making the headlines. But the reason I remember is the confusion and embarrassment it sometimes caused to visiting speakers who hadn't been fully briefed. They sometimes came expecting teenage students (and with a presentation geared to their expected level of knowledge and experience), and were clearly taken aback by finding the room full of people with the same level of seniority and expertise as themselves!
The book is excellent, as is the Association (of which I have been a member for over 40 years).

You might like to look at their web-site, www.railwaystudyassociation.org

My recent visit to Belgium (see earlier blog post) led me to reflect on languages.

If you are a train operator in, for example, the Netherlands, Flanders or Norway where the local language is known by a relatively small population (4m - 8m) and by very few others, what do you do when communicating with passengers?

How much do you translate into, say, English?

This is even more complex in Flanders (where you could also use French or German) and Catalonia (where you could also use Spanish).

Pictograms are valuable, although you can't use them for everything.

Putting everything in the local language and another - English, for example - risks devaluing the local language. And the local language is of course fundamental to the culture of the country. Indeed, in some places it is actually a political statement.

The aviation industry uses local language plus English, although its presence in a country is obviously much less pervasive than the railway industry.

The alternative - of using the local language for virtually everything - is an easy option, but many visitors can be put off. Learning another language for a 2-week visit is one thing: doing so for a 2-night business trip is something else!

And I leave you with the thought of a friend in London Underground on a trip to Germany, when his knowledge of German was fairly basic. He knew that Ausgang meant exit - but what about Notausgang? It actually means Emergency Exit, but it carries entirely the wrong message to people like himself!