Shaping Modernity. The railway journey across two centuries

Society generally looks patronisingly or with benevolence upon railway fans, as if they were children. In reality, they are serious people, with very diverse preoccupations, drawn around a common passion: trains and railroads. We all had the opportunity of noticing this during a conference which took place between September 12th and 14th, 2019 in Cluj, Romania, hosted by Babeș-Bolyai University and the Faculty of History and Philosophy. Entitled „The Railway Journey from the 19th to the 21st Centuries. A Cultural History of Railway Transport and Mobility”, it was the first of its kind ever to be held in Romania. The organisers were Babeș-Bolyai University through the Faculty of History and Philosophy, the “George Barițiu” Institute of History within the Romanian Academy, the Society for Historical Sciences in Romania and the International Association for Railway History.

Thirty-six historians, literary scholars, researchers and non-academic presenters took part. We observed them for three days, at the conference venue, at the projection and the informal discussion at the end of the event, as well as during the trip at the Remarul enterprise (for engine and car repairs) and at the Dej railway museum and railyard. On all of these occasions, we saw passionate people, interested both in the topic of their research and in trains and railways in general. We could not help but notice the joy exhibited by participants of all ages upon climbing onto the historic locomotives displayed in the open-air museum in Dej. (from ”The Introduction”)