This topic is suggested by a book review that I wrote for posting on a professional audio blog. It compared an author who wrote similar books for two different publishers to Frank Junian Sprague, who designed competing and compatible multiple-unit control systens for Westinghouse and General Electric. (The books do have slightly different emphais, one is more suited for designing equipment and the for applying it. but both are usable as college textbooks.) Similarly, railroads compete, but also cooperate. If this thread is permitted, with politics and religion not forbidden topics, we could extend similar analogies to the world’s problems. The rules would be no insults, no personal derrogatory comments, facts of wrongdoing of world leaders could be presented, but this should not result demonization of any leader , such as past USA Presidents, etc. I think we need the comment of the moderator to know if such a thread is possible. Otherwise, I’d be happy to enter into correspondence via internet with those interested. daveklepper@yahoo.com
I believe I need the moderator’s permission before I post the professional audio website, for those wishing to read the review. The reivew would hint at the kind of conversion i imagine, and I have other postings on the website that also go in this direction.
I’m not sure what kinds of things you’re thinking about. I immediately remembered that the diesel electric drive used in locomotives, was also used in U.S. fleet submarines in WWII. I understand the U.S. pioneered the application of this technology to subs, with other countries eventually following suit. My question is whether the subs came first, or the locomotives.
Networking of local electricity generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity into a broader region was started by the PRR to serve its multi-state electrification. The companies involved were Baltimore Gas & Electric, Pennsylvania Power & Light (the Safe Harbor hydropower plant is owned jointly by those two), Philadelphia Electric, Public Service Electric and Gas (NJ), and Consolidated Edison (NYC) (see the last couple of posts on this forum: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2627359 ) Over the years (starting in 1927) that system morphed into today’s PJM as a Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”) - see:
Notably, PJM has been mostly immune or has isolated itself from some of the large-scale blackouts in the last 50 years - the big one in 1965, the also big one in 2003, and some other smaller ones. I believe this extraordinary record results from the ‘robustness’ of the system and the ‘culture’ of reliability inheritied from the PRR and the early electric companies. See:
This is exactly the kind of thinking I hoped to generate. An example of rivales sharing for the common good is of course the numerous jointly owned terminal railroads, PRSL, and now Conrail Shared Assetts.
Inermodal is of course an example of trucking and railroads cooperating. But that does not stop railroads from doing our best to stop increases in weight limits on highways.
Now I wish to get internationally political. The UN was started as a reaction to WWII, and democracies were prominent. Now we have the majority of UN members being not democracies but undemocratic Kingdoms (defining the UK as a democratic Kingdom, possibly Jordan and Morocco as well) or complete secular or religious dictatorships. Is it time for a new international body? Should the British Commonwealth be expanded to include all countries with either English as the major language or a major language (remember Canada is officially bilingual but certainly would be includeded - which might open the way for Israel, which is officially trilingual, just look at the money or the recorded and signed announcement on the Jerusalem light rail, and India as well)? It is certainly not up to us to decide, but it is an idea worth suggesting?
All these countries share a deeply ingrained democratic tradition, which may possibly be traced to the Magna Carta or even to Jeshro’s advice to Moses.
I think the railroads agreeing to a standard rail gauge is a rather significant. Not sure who forced a common coupler.
but from a telecommunications perspective, such cooperation usually requires an equal burden on all parties. European phone systems, the phone systems in each country, were built to different standards making it difficult to have decent quality service between countries. The solution was to adopt a new digital approach, ISDN, requiring all countries to invest in the new technology.
another somewhat counter example is the adoption of television in Europe. In order to prevent American manufacturers from having an advantage, Europe adopted a different frame rate, 50 instead of 60 Hz. Are there examples of particular railroads adopting different standards to prevent cooperation?
in other cases, the investments or issues are so large that larger governments agencies are required to build or force consensus. Examples are the Federal Reserve banking system that basically took over what large banks (e.g. J.P. Morgan) were collectively doing. The Apollo moon project organized American industries and that cooperation led to future successes. And air traffic control and aircraft regulations handled under the FAA Today, government is still needed for such large projects, which is in conflict with some political groups for smaller government, to help creat
Yes they were, starting in 1883. However, most of the country, including the Federal government, didn’t follow suit until the time of World War One, for various (mostly silly) reasons.
And ACY, subs came first with hybrid drives. John Hollands’ submarine of 1897 used a gasolene / electric drive system, gas on the surface running a generator and electric motor plus charging storage batteries and then electric drive only submerged. Diesel engines were substitued later for the gas engines for safety reasons.
Later came submarine sandwiches, but that’s another story.
Railroads were the first to adopt standard time. And then it was adopted by the Government. The building of the CP and UP to standard gauge was a Federal decision, and that pretty well created the demand for other railroads to follow suit. In Brittain, standard gauge was required by the Government, despite the objections of the Great Western, which wished to keep its six-foot gauge. In the USA gauge conversion was mostly voluntary, if not entirely.
Actually, steel goes way back before the railroads, in one form or another, all the way back to ancient Rome. Think body armor and edged weapons.
However, steel making was a very time-consuming and labor intensive process until the Bessemer process was invented in the 19th Century. After that there was plenty of steel to go around, and at reasonable prices too.
International organizations existed hundreds of years before railroads. How has the UN evolved from “lessons from railroading”. This thread seems like a vehicle to get into some political agenda.
I made no bones about that on my first posting, but the political agenda for me, at least, is non-ideological and an attempt to solve problems, including political and international problems. You mention the UN. Do you think the UN is doing its job? Did the ICC do a good job for transportation in the USA? Maybe we need a Staggers Act internationally. That is why a proposed an English-speaking confederation. Maybe there are other ideas. Car/truck manufacuters and railroads generally don’t belong to the same trade organization. International politics is also a trade, and from that standpoint, the UN is a trade organization. Clearly, dictatorships have different goals than democracies.
Did not Carnegie first work for the PRR before he went into steel making?` think I recall that Scott as PRR Pres. sent him to Engnland to learn the best of their technology, and then he came back and basically adopted the process but modified it as a mass-production continuous-flow process rather than a batch process.
And the PRR needed steel, lots of it, to convert to steel rails instead of iron, steel coaches instead of wood or composite. The PRR did build the first practical steel passenger coach, and it was a good enough design that the NYC also used it with small variations for the first steel electric mus to run into the incomplete Grand Central Terminal.
Thanks for truly ancient history of steel, nowhere in my mind yesterday if I ever learned it in school.
Excerpt from The Creaters of the Age of Steel by W. T. Jeans (1884)
In the commercial history of the last hundred years there are three events that have had a revolutionary effect in accelerating our industrial development. The first was the construction of the steam engine by James Watt, the second was the introduction of the penny post by Sir Rowland Hill, and the third was the invention of means of producing cheap steel by Sir Henry Bessemer and Sir Wm. Siemens. It is a remarkable feature of each of these great improvements that they came perfect from the hands of their authors. Of the steam engine Sir Wm Siemens has well remarked that if any proof were wanting of the great genius of Watt it would be sufficient to observe that the steam engine of the present day is in point of principle still the same as it left his hands three-quarters of a century ago, and that our age of material progress could only affect its form. Sir William Armstrong has likewise said that by a succession of brilliant inventions, comprising, amongst others, his parallel motion and his ball governor, Watt advanced to the final conception of the double-acting rotative engine, which became applicable to every purpose requiring motive power, and continues
But for the USA, or North America in general, Carnegie certainly deserves the second place. The Bessemer process in England had each major stage in the process take place at different locations, even different organizations, requiring some transport from one to another. From what I learned, mainly from the Morris book THE DAWN OF INNOVATION, is that Carneigie, put these processes together, adopted asssembly-line techniques, and in any case brought the Bessemer process to the USA, making steel more economically than it was in England. And it was the Pennsylvania Railroad that gave Carnegie the iniative to do this.
Excerpt from A Nation of Steel by Thomas J. Misa http://www.tc.umn.edu/~tmisa/NOS/1.3_develop.html
The Pennsylvania Railroad was the outstanding example of the virtual fusion of user and producer that could result in this sector. A large number of employees with “second” careers, the prevalence of insider contracting, and strategic personal investing by its top officers all contributed to this result. Andrew Carnegie was only the most famous of its middle managers that had successful second careers in closely related fields. Before becoming steel producer par excellence, Carnegie climbed the Pennsylvania’s corporate ladder and proved himself an able manager of its western division. After leaving the railroad in March 1865 with twelve years service he enjoyed close relations with Thomas A. Scott and J. Edgar Thomson, the Pennsylvania’s vice president and president, respectively. Thomson, Carnegie said, was the “great pillar in this country of steel for everything.”