i have heard this term and just sawi it recently in trains mag.i have no idea what this means.[?]
It predates commercial air travel and has no relation. It means “shortest line between two points.” It was a popular marketing term for railroads in the late 19th century, particularly railroads appealing to passengers and shippers who wanted the fastest route.
OS
The way I understand it, an “air line” is one that goes from point A to point B in as straight a line as possible. This doesn’t always happen of course, but you bypass certain smaller communities in order to keep the line aimed at the eventual destination. One gives up various traffic opportunities, but maybe it’s made up on speed.
I suppose it’s more of a marketing term than anything; the Seaboard Air Line didn’t exactly run in a straight line from Richmond, Virginia to Miami, Florida. An article I read on the company in fact indicated that it did anything but.
Of course, the ultimate example was the proposed Chicago-New York Electric Air Line (!) which actually intended to run in a straight line between the two endpoints mentioned. Like most interurban proposals, almost none of it was built beyond some track in northwest Indiana which became part of Gary Railways.
You know, like “as the crow flies…”
You’re right, the SAL isn’t very straight from Miami to Richmond, but it did have the longest stretch of tangent mainline in North America. Hint: it’s in Florida!
There is a famous story, perhaps fiction, that in Russia the tsar directed that a major railroad line be built perfectly straight. He laid a map of Russia on a tape, got out a ruler, set it between the two points, and drew a perfectly straight line,and ordered his engineers to “build this.”
Problem is, his royal fingertips were hanging over the edge of the ruler and as a consequence, his perfectly straight line had three funny little bumps in the middle.
The railroad engineers, obedient to a fault, constructed a perfectly straight railroad with three huge entirely unnecessary curves exactly as shown on the map given to them …
Dave Nelson
I thought it was in NC between Hamlet and Wilmington.
There was once – gone now, except for bits and pieces of old right of way and a few odd bits of still-used track – a Boston to New Haven ‘airline’ route which ran through eastern Connecticut. There are some rather spectacular (well, spectacular for the east coast anyway) fills on it. It was the route of some remarkably fast passenger service, including the so-called ‘Ghost Train’ – named thus because it had an all-white consist and ran through eastern Connecticut in the early evening twilight. As I recall the schedule time from Boston to New York was under 5 hours – not bad in those days. Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘007’ (long before James Bond!) was based on it. However… eastern Connecticut is pretty empty territory, even today, and there was no intermediate traffic, so the entire route was not economical and got abandoned rather early on.
No, but several line segments were very straight. Check out old maps: ColumbiaSC-SavannahGA; HamletNC-ColumbiaSC, plus the Hamlet-WilmingtonNC section mentioned above. As mentioned in Trains and elsewhere, the lines were straight but did not follow the topography, so there was a lot of hill-and-dale running (which drove up operating costs).
so it means shortest or most direct route route between two points? i guess that makes sence.thanks for the responses.
dknelson: Many years ago, there was a famous cartoon in “The New Yorker,” of which I was reminded by your Russian story.
In the cartoon, one sees the plans for a glass-walled skyscraper being studied; next, one sees a fly on the plans that was swatted by one of the people studying the plans; finally, one sees the completed building, complete with a giant fly in the glass wall!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s in North Carolina.
That straight line on the map would turn into one long curve in reality!
You’re right, the SAL isn’t very straight from Miami to Richmond, but it did have the longest stretch of tangent mainline in North America. Hint: it’s in Florida!
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I thought it was in NC between Hamlet and Wilmington.
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I’ve got to go with Don on this one - Roy
there is an air-line in the Chicago area. doesn’t this simply mean “elevated”? it is a conventional railroad, not part of the subway-system.
When they thinking of building the CP line thru the Canadian Rockies
One of the engineers proposed a straight line. It never came to fruitition.
When flying from U>S> or Canada to Europe
the shortest distance is not a straight line
but a curved line. Get out your globe
and a piece of string and see the difference.
Spherical Geometry wins again and that straight lines that curve are straight in the direction of travel. Will wonders never cease.[bow][bow][:-,][2c][#ditto][:-^] It is a good thing I done confuzz to often.
Actually, “great circle” routes are straight as an arrow (disregarding the curvature of the earth). They have to curve on a flat map in order to compensate for the distortion created by flattening the globe to make the map…
If you take morseman’s suggestion with the string on the globe, make note of some of the places it passes over, then plot them on a flat map. Vive la difference!
I would think in all the time I’ve spent involved with Chicago railroads that someone would have mentioned that the “air line” in St. Charles Air Line came from its elevation. But no one ever has. I see no reason to doubt that it refers to its role as shortest possible line between two points, as opposed to the roundabout routes it replaced.
OS