---
title: "The Solari board, the mechanical flip-flap station display"
language: en
topics: ["art", "data", "design", "people", "programming", "work"]
full_article_url: https://willem.com/en/2025-08-11_willemstagram/
---
# The Solari board, the mechanical flip-flap station display

*The clattering departure boards made by Solari di Udine.*

> A Solari board is a mechanical display with flip-flapping panels, named after Solari di Udine, the Italian company that produced them. Stations used them for departure information, each update giving that recognisable clattering sound.

The best known Dutch example hung in the central hall of Utrecht Centraal station: a giant blue departure board of 7 by 4.20 metres, weighing around 3000 kilos, its mechanical panels flipping every minute or so. Utrecht has since switched to digital information displays, but the original board survives and can still be seen in Het Spoorwegmuseum.
I have a personal soft spot for it: I met my wife right under that board.
The flip-flap idea later inspired the Visual Journal on my own homepage, a 3D version built with ThreeJS in which every panel shows a photo that acts as a departure into one of my stories, released as free software under the AGPL.