DES MOINES — A bipartisan move is afoot in the Legislature to go lights-out on daylight saving time in Iowa.
Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, has filed legislation — Senate File 168 — seeking to establish Central Standard Time as Iowa’s official 24-hour daily measurement. House Republicans expect their bill to surface Wednesday and put the kibosh on making the time switch later this year that would move clocks ahead by one hour on March 12 and move them back one hour on Nov. 5.
On CSX there is CSX Time - the entire railroad operates on one time as defined by the CSX Computer System. Eastern or Central it doesn’t matter. The computer system does observe Eastern Daylight time when it is in effect and Eastern Standard time when it is in effect.
Before the institution of standard time zones, it was quite difficult to make certain that a train you planned to ride made a connection with another train in a town west of where you started. Standard time made it possible to know whether or not such a connection existed.
If you traveled from Norfork to Chattanooga, you traveled over five railroads–and each road operated on a different time.
The resistance is to upsetting daily routines twice a year for the sake of “more daylight time in the evening.” In the southern states, it means another hour of hot afternoon and one less cool hour in the morning. Several years ago, a study showed that more electricity was used during the DST period than was used during the rest of the year.
The British observed double war time during WWII–to reduce the number of people on the street at the time that the German bombers came over.
To me, it is Daylight Stupid Time. From time to time, there is talk of enacting a law in Utah to the effect that 105th Meridian time will be observed year-round.
Non contiguous time zones would be interesting on the California Zephyr.
You currently leave Chicago at say 14:00 and cross the Mississippi. Arrive in Burlington, Iowa at 17:30. 205 miles in 3.5 hours for a 58 mph average.
Make Iowa an island of standard time surrounded by daylight time.
You leave Chicago at 14:00 and arrive in Iowa at 16:30. 205 miles in 2.5 hours for a 82 mph average. Accomplishing high speed rail goes to hell when you go from Creston, IA to Omaha, NE.
There would be notes in the Amtrak TT for this train and for the Southwest Chief, just as there are notes for the trains that cross Arizona (one of two states with intelligent legislatures concerning standard time). Of course, some people might have trouble handling two more time changes asthey travel.
There would be notes in the Amtrak TT for this train and for the Southwest Chief, just as there are notes for the trains that cross Arizona (one of two states with intelligent legislatures concerning standard time). Of course, some people might have trouble handling two more time changes as they travel.
The Southwest Chief would present an interesting schedule if Iowa alone changes time. Ft. Madison is the Southwest Chief’s only Iowa stop.
You would travel 58 miles from Galesburg, IL to Ft. Madison, IA in -4 minutes on the timetable. Warp speed would vanish in Ft. Madison and there would rapid be deceleration upon crossing the Des Moines River into Missouri.
People do not depend on rail travel as they did in 1883. When every city and village ran on their own time the result was confusion akin to most understanding Quantum Physics.
Iowa staying on Standard time year round is not likely to become law.
Speaking of railroads having their own standard time…
A book of the history of Milford, Michigan is entitled “Ten Minutes Ahead of the Rest of the World,” a nod to a youthful prank that was not immediately discovered and caused a fair amount of consternation until it was.
Seems several boys managed to set the telephone operator’s clock ten minutes fast. Of course, that being the “standard” (the operator was responsible for blowing the noon whistle precisely at noon), everyone else adjusted their clocks as well. There was some confusion as several trains failed to arrive on time and people were arriving early for out-of town appointments.
Eventually (after several days), the discrepancy was found and corrected, but, as noted in the beginning of the book, “…in the meantime, Milford was not only the prettiest little village in Michigan, it was ten minutes ahead of the rest of the world.”
I may be mis-remembering, but my recollection from 1964 is that the ATSF passenger timetable was in standard time only, with some bold-face reminders of that fact scattered around the document. Time zones were correct, but dayight savings time was ignored.
1967 was the year that DST was enforced over the entire country except in the states whose legislatures stood up and said, “We will not conform to this stupidity.”
It had been more or less local option as to being observed and as to when the observance began and ended each year.
I remember a short story in Reader’s Digest many (too many) years ago… as best as I can remember it now, it was about a village clockmaker/jeweler that noticed a certain man stopped at the window of his shop every morning and adjusted his watch to the clocks displayed in the shop window. The clockmaker made sure all of the clocks in the window were the same and correct to the time of the noon whistle from the village sawmill.
The man stopped by the shop to adjust his watch every morning for many years. One morning the jeweler went out of his shop to talk to the man and comment about his setting his watch every day because he was impressed by the man wanting to always have the correct time.
The man responded that he had to make sure his watch was correct because he was responsible for blowing the noon whistle at the sawmill and he knew that everybody relied on that noon whistle to know what time it was.
A local fire department used to set off their siren every day at noon. Problem was, the station was in a building with a large backup generator, and the folks responsible for the building would test the generator each week - by shutting off power to the building so the generator would have to respond. It took several minutes for the generator to take the load (by design), but that meant the clock that set off the siren would then be several minutes slow. It usually got taken care of fairly quickly, but sometimes the “noon” siren was as much as 15 minutes late…
As an amateur radio operator, one of the modes of communication I play with is “JT65.” Transmissions from all stations start at the top of the minute, and that timing is important, if not super critical.
I have a program on my computer that checks with the various time standards and corrects the time on the computer down to a fraction of a minute.
Technically the preferred solution, and the smartest is to make DST the new Standard Time, and before anyone starts complaining…the original reason for DST was because of FARMERS, to allow them an extra hour of working the fields. Now people complain about it being so dark when kids go to school in the morning. We run DST from March to November, basically 2/3 of the year, why not just bite the bullet and change it to year around. I’d personally rather have the extra hour in the afternoon, than worry about the morning.
Here in South Dakota, we’re pretty far north and have a short growing season. Our crops need that extra hour of sunlight DST provides to do their best!
Or we could simplify everything and use GMT. That way the whole world will be in the same time zone and even when travelling you’d never need to reset your watch!
On a more serious note, up here north of the 49th Parallel I appreciate the extra hour of evening daylight in the summer. In the shortest days of winter switching back to standard time helps make the mornings more bearable.
Farmers didn’t like it, but I could never see much reason why they couldn’t continue to operate the farm on the time of their choice. Might have to remember church service in town was at a different hour of course.
I remember when the commuter train timetables were issued in Standard Time, even though the city (and the trains themselves) functioned on Daylight Time for 6 months of the year. The 4:15pm train still ran at 4:15pm, even though the public timetable showed it as 3:15pm.
Johnny, you’ll appreciate this. In 1979 I attended a two-week manufacturer training session in Salt Lake City in probably mid-July. We arrived on Sunday afternoon about dinner time and checked into the hotel and had dinner. The day’s drive from Las Vegas had been tiring, so I decided to turn in at about nine. When we turned the lights out, there was considerable light leaking around the drapes which made me think that SLC had some pretty bright street lights. I peeked out to see and discovered plenty of “saved daylight” still coming in.
It was nice to have that extra hour (compared to San Diego) of after-dinner sightseeing time during the two weeks.
I was told once that railroads didn’t observe daylight saving’s time years ago. Even so, most railroads back when employee time tables had schedules, issued new time tables on the day of the changes.