I have two questions. As most here are painfully aware, I am modeling 1885.
First question: I read that automatic block detection was invented in 1872. What kind of signals were used and how were they used?
Second question: Factories could employ dozens if not hundreds of people who worked long hours. What provisions, if any, did they make for the employees’ horses?
Editied for typos.
I don’t have a clue, but if there was a large factory it would be in a larger center where people wouldn’t likely to have personal horses. They most likely walked to work, living in the immediate surroundings. Mass transit such as streetcars - horse driven ones too - allowed people to live father away from their workplaces.
Bob Boudreau
Probably the only employees wealthy enough to ride their own horses to work were the senior managers, and they would probably leave them in a livery stable (1885 equivalent of a valet parking garage) in the neighborhood. The plant director probably arrived in his own coach, driven by his groom, who would then return home until the factory whistle blew in the evening. Wage slaves walked.
Now we all drive, breathing exhaust fumes and snarling expletives at the road designer and our fellow drivers. Somehow, I don’t see this as an improvement.
Chuck
The mines I’m modeling built bunkhouses onsite for the miners, and boom towns sprang up nearby. With wages as low as $3.50 per day, many miners would pay a dollar for a real bed, sometimes in a tent, and another dollar for a home cooked meal.
On Sundays or holidays, miners would walk eight miles down to larger towns for a bit of celebration, and if hungover or running late in the morning, would rent a horse from a livery stable in town. On reaching the mines, the rider would just secure the reins and turn the horse loose, and it would find the way back to the stable on it’s own.
Okay don’t worry about parking horses. I figured before the unions the companies would not offer any benefits regarding horses.
What about question 1, the signals?
For the signals, the answer is right on this site:
http://www.modelrailroader.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/003/035lsexb.asp
Read down a bit, or search for “HARDWARE: DIFFERENT TYPES OF EQUIPMENT”
Ball signals were the first, and it looks for the later 1800s era you want that Semophores were the most common signal.
And BTW, the visual of a parking lot full of horses is rather amusing - and since speeding tickets were given out to carriage drivers during the 1800s, perhaps they also gave out parking tickets, tucking the ticket behind the horse’s ear so he couldn’t eat it…
maybe bicycles were more likely than horses ?
Nope; before about WWI, bycicles were expensive rich man’s toys, and cost more than a horse. SO, everyone walked, or if they were rich enough to afford a dime a day (unlikely, read “The Jungle”) they took mass transit.
Remember that the definition of a knight is someone who can afford a horse…and it’s upkeep. Even most farmers in the USA, if they could afford even a single horse, had a plowhorse (or mule) and NOT a riding or driving horse (which is MUCH different). Being able to afford any sort of wheeled vehicle in the 1800s was like being able to afford you own AIRPLANE today.
Thanks, That was a good read. I don’t know how I’ll incorporate it into my layout or if I even can. Not only would it take time and expense to build, I can’t see how it would make sense on my 5 x 8.
The most logical use of signals on your layout as it stands now is to put train order signals at your stations and, possibly, at any important point that doesn’t have a station you can open a train order office. See page 75 of Realistic Layouts.
Train order signals usually had round or pointed semaphore arms to differentiate them from interlocking signals. The aspects were:
Arm vertical - no orders, train may proceed on timetable authority, or in accordance with previously-issued orders.
Arm at 45 degrees - engineer and conductor pick up Form 31 order, which would be held out on a hoop to be collected while the train was in motion.
Arm horizontal - stop, so engineer and conductor can sign the order book for a Form 19 order. (Form 19 was used for orders that placed restrictions on a train’s timetable authority or on conditions set by previous orders.) The locomotive did not have to stop short of the signal, but could be allowed to run several carlengths past it to shorten the conductor’s walk from the caboose or last passenger car.
Some roads left the arms horizontal and only set them to a more permissive aspect when the train was in sight. Others left the arms vertical unless there were orders for the next train due through. Ya pays yer money, and ya takes yer choise.
Chuck
You’d be best off with train order signals, as Chuck suggested, or manual block signals. You’d be very unlikely to find track-circuited signals in the time and place you’re modelling - the initial applications of this technology were on high-density, high-speed lines.
Cheers,
Mark.
Didn’t the peaceful town of Rock Ridge have parking meters for the horses? I seem to remember that from the movie.
And don’t forget the toll gate!
I actually had the toll gate ready and the figures ready for doing the scene–minus the German soldiers (but Preiser has a great set). When it came time to scenic that spot on the layout, trees sort of manifested themselves and my signature is there now.
Mark and Tom,
As much as I have tried to disguise it, my layout is a loop-de-loop and block detection would be ludicrous. Likewise, I can’t see in a practical sense working the signals manually. But on the other hand, I realize that I need an interlocking tower of some sort at a location of the layout I now realize is interchange.
How times change! Back at the turn of the century… ie 1900… the automobile was seen as the saviour of the big city… because of the massive (and largely solid) problem of…er… “horse exhaust”.
Push bikes in common use (in Europe at least) were earlier than WW1… can’t recall dates… certainly by 1880 BUT - the thing that limited them was a choice between no solid internal parts left in the rider’s body with solid tyres or endless punctures before the majority of roads were macadamed. From notes in another thread I would guess that the lack of macadamed roads maybe held push-bikes back much longer in the USA than here.
We forget how far every body took it as completely normal to walk. Most of the West was won at walking pace… or, as William Heat Moon points out at the pace of draft animals… the majority of which were probably not horses, nor even mules but oxen. He quotes some scholar or another as pointing out that a signifacant part of the “grit” of settlers probably related to spending long hours on a hard seat directly in back of an oxen’s rear. Kind of changes the whole perspective…
As for signals… definitely go with Train Order and Timetable. An Interlocking would only be provided where BOTH the number of connections AND the weight of concentrated traffic justified the cost. So long as there was time for cheap labour to through the ground throws, trains moved slowly and plant was expensive to buy and maintain (fitters aren’t cheap labour) a Railroad would stick with the simplest/cheapest system.
The BIG problem with all things electrical outdoors remained the need to find reliable insulation until the development of plastics. This m
Obviously you’ve never stepped in a giant pile of horse poop. [(-D]
Most western railroads were unsignalled (interlockings excepted) until the early part of the twentieth century, if then: the D&RGW was still running trains on timetables and train orders over unsignalled lines at the outbreak of the Second World War. The UP and the SP signalled the Overland Route after the Harriman takeover at the turn of the century, but most lines made do with agencies at major and minor towns to issue train orders. Manual block operations were rare, because of the expense involved - labor costs were a big factor. The SP did build one on the Donner Pass line just before WWI, but that’s probably about it, in the West - you might want to check John Signor’s book “Donner Pass” for details on it (they used a unique “disk signal” for visibility inside the snowsheds).
If you want an idea of what a company town looked like, you might want to read Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose.”
Incidentally, Kalmbach just published a book on modeling junctions that covers the construction of a working mechanical interlocking plant - “The Model Railroader’s Guide to Junctions.”
I believe that the first mechanical interlockings in the US were installed on the East Coast in the 1870’s. The Pennsylvania at East Newark and the New York Central at Spuyten Duyvil in Manhattan. Note that these were extremely busy spots at major destinations in the New York City area. I would guess that most locations in the West would not have been busy enough, nor would the railroads necessarily want to incur the expense, of an interlocking at this time. Manual block, or train order operation was just as likely to be safe, and didn’t depend on what was new technology, at least on this side of the Atlantic.
Unless you’re modeling a very busy place, you may not need an interlocking in 1885, only some ten years or so later than the first instance in the US. This would be a good topic to track down for your proposed location in your historical research. (Oh, good!! Another thing to research!!)
Good sites for info on interlockings, and signaling in general are here: http://www.du.edu/~etuttle/rail/lock.htm
http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/railhom.htm
http://www.railroad-signaling.com/
Modratec in Australia can custom-build a working mechanical interlocking for your track configuration. The price is quite reasonable for the mechanical work of art which you wind up with: http://modratec.com/
-Ed