Buchbinderei and Berlin Stadtbahn

Several years ago I found this image floating around the web with no attribution, date, or description but was immediately drawn to it because of the stark imagery, the decay, and the fact that it was (once?) a bindery...

Searching in Flickr just now, I found another image of the same bindery, in color no less, that provides a bit more context in the form of the concrete protrusion at the top right. Image below by Markus Mayer from 2009 with the same graffiti and a similar reflection of a Plattenbau in the windows...

Flickr had a few more images of it such as this one that clearly show a railroad trestle above... A bit more searching brought me to Berlin, right near the iconic (for train geeks) Jannowitzbrücke and the Berlin Stadtbahn. This is along the Spree in what was once East Berlin.

A link to a quiz of the "where is this" sort provided a bit of history from a genealogy forum. This indicated that this was once the Buchbinderei Scholz. Interesting story for those that can read German ending with success in tracking down a relation/ancestor.

Click Google Maps Street View to view this July 2008 image,
spin image around to see the reflecting Plattenbau...
The TV tower at the Alexanderplatz is at right.

Click Google Maps Street View to view this July 2008 image,
spin image around to see the reflecting Plattenbau...

Would love to have a bindery at that somewhat desolate location. Combine to passion at one location, books and trains.Could even be something to model...

Going West

Going West is a short stop action film created by Andersen M Studio that blends two of my passions, books and railroads. You'll have to imagine the train, but the tracks are there...

The film's "book" is by Maurice Gee and the film was mode for the New Zealand Book Council.

Amazing imagery!

Choo Choo's End

As a bookbinder, model railroader, and lover of children's books focused on railroads, Virginia Lee Burton's Choo Choo is a natural to bind or interpret. It was also begging me to create an artist's book based on it. In the book, Choo Choo bored by his hum-drum life of pulling locals makes a run for, loses his tender, and runs out of steam in the dark woods. In "Thomas" speak, he was not a helpful engine that day. As luck, and fate would have it, he is saved by the big, bad streamliner in the form of a stylized Union Pacific M10000 who pulls him out backwards. Though mending his ways, Choo Choo will inevitably be rendered obsolete by the streamliner.



The structure of the book is called a flagbook and while not really my bag, a lot of fun to view and handle. The image for the interior was found online thanks to the help of some friendly ferroequinologists and that on the covers was taken from the book. Overall, in terms of "finish" a passable prototype...




A fun project and one I have owed my friend Karen for some time. She makes fantastic use of the structure.

Two other examples of combining bookbinding/book arts and trains are the bindings on Carsten Ramcke's A Christmas Tale, and Other Short Stories, a compilation of some of his Märklin / railroad short stories.

and

I really need to do more of this...