TCDD Hospitals as a Historical and Cultural Landscape Fragment: A Study on the Construction-Destruction Axis

This study is an examination of the historical and cultural existence of the railway hospitals built by the State Railways of the Republic of Turkey in the 20th century to serve its employees. Railway hospitals have an integral historical value as concrete components of the vast railway landscape produced in line with national policies following the declaration of the republic. On the other hand, as one of the founding elements of the spatial tradition that was formed around these policies and continued for generations by a large group of employees also known as railway workers, they have also produced an autonomous cultural value. The study will present an examination of the situation in the 20th and 21st centuries on the axis of construction and destruction through two archival sources in which spatial narratives that are in one sense opposite and in the other sense complementary are observed. The first of these is the 'Railroads Magazine', which was established simultaneously with the national/institutional construction in the railways and published as the professional journal of the State Railways between 1925-1998, and the second is the 'City and Railway' blog, which was established in 2007 with the initiative of a group of employees as a reaction to the creative destruction that has developed in the railways in the last quarter century. The primary goal of the study is to make a little-known fragment of the railway landscape in Turkey visible within its historical and cultural context by reading these two sources mutually. As a secondary layer, the study aims to conduct a basic level of examination of the current value of the journal and the blog, which represent different archival tendencies.