Radical Passion

Within the graffiti culture trains are more than just a means to the end for getting your name up more than by painting on walls. Many trainwriters have favourite models, others hunt down rare ones even on a global scale and try to paint them. There is an undeniable overlap of those who write on trains and those who belong to the group of passionate train lovers. The authors of “Radical Passion – The World’s Longest Produced Electric Train and a Vibrant Train Culture” unite both categories in their 528-paged monster of a book.

The book’s main focus is a polish train model, best known under the model name EN57. The electric train, whose production began back in 1962, has a long history and became part of the country’s cultural asset over the last six decades. In two main chapters The Units and The Cult the authors brought together historic footage, details on the construction and colour schemes, collected every imaginable photograph of the beloved model and dug deep into the archives of railway culture to expose rare finds like the first ever wholecar in Poland from 1993 by some guys from Dortmund.

Although graffiti is an important segment of the content, it’s only a part of the book with an own chapter next to Photography, Film, Visual art, Tattoo, Apparel + Curios, Simulator, Model building and Afterlife. Besides interviews with railway enthusiasts, collectors, transit police, train model makers, train engineers, photographers and representatives of the transit authority, featured artists are Urbino, Martha Cooper, Good Guy Boris, Luke Trouble, Miserable Face, HOUSE, XMAN, FINER, FILES, KOLT, SLID, ASWAN, URAN, BLEKOT, KRIPOE and many more.

As passionate as lovers of the EN57 are about their favourite model, as much love to detail the publishers but in the research and the design of this tome. The 2022 publication is limited to 1500 pieces (400 in English language) and includes so much interesting content that you will most definitely make use of the accompanying bookmark.

528 pages, 21 x 28 cm, paperback, open spine with dust jacket
Language: English
Authors: Dawid Błaszczyk, Tomek Czechowicz, Maciej Janus, and Marian Misiak
Release date: February 2022
Publisher: Torypress & Threedotstype