Marking 125 Years Since the Great Gauge Change 426
Arnold Reinhold writes "This month ends with the 125th anniversary of one of the most remarkable achievements in technology history. Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 1886, the railroad network in the southern United States was converted from a five-foot gauge to one compatible with the slightly narrower gauge used in the US North, now know as standard gauge. The shift was meticulously planned and executed. It required one side of every track to be moved three inches closer to the other. All wheel sets had to be adjusted as well. Some minor track and rolling stock was sensibly deferred until later, but by Wednesday the South's 11,500 mile rail network was back in business and able to exchange rail cars with the North. Other countries are still struggling with incompatible rail gauges. Australia still has three. Most of Europe runs on standard gauge, but Russia uses essentially the same five foot gauge as the old South and Spain and Portugal use an even broader gauge. India has a multi-year Project Unigauge, aimed at converting its narrow gauge lines to the subcontinent's five foot six inch standard."
Part of a general pattern (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Part of a general pattern (Score:4, Insightful)
Our electric grid is primitive and outdated and our fastest passenger trains like the Acela high speed rail on the East Coast are slower than regular trains in other places like Japan
Both have the same core problems...
First, private monopoly large scale providers result in the inevitable property taxes levied on the routes, after all why not make the "outsiders" pay property taxes until they bleed... The owners can/might survive depreciation and interest costs of improved routes, but they'll never survive the prop taxes on improved routes. Its kind of like adding an extra 5% to the published interest rate in perpetuity, and taxes always and only go up making an unlimited liability for the private owners.
NIMBY is the second problem, for better or worse we operate sorta kinda partially under the rule of law, and we certainly have plenty of hungry lawyers out to stop all progress.
Re:Part of a general pattern (Score:5, Informative)
You're on the list for "most short sighted person in humanity". Just because something is an inconvenience for you doesn't mean that there is no benefit.
It sounds like you're delivering stuff by trucks/cars. Guess what, there might be something more important out there than you.
Trains deliver huge amounts of raw materials. Things like steel that are used to make trucks.
Trains deliver huge amounts of energy, namely coal used to power nearly half of the electricity in the US.
Try looking past your nose some time.
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Yup, this is one of the major problems with some train routes in the US. There are tons and tons of train routes, the only ones you notice and get annoyed at are the ones with grade level crossings.
Nobody gets upset because there's a BART going by. But people (including myself) have to wait for Caltrain to go by in a lot of places. Thankfully I only bike over Caltrain's right of way about once every few weeks these days.
The US needs a major infrastructure push to get rail fixed.
A) Eliminate grade level c
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Part of a general pattern (Score:5, Insightful)
driving equated to the ultimate form of personal freedom
Still does. Try getting anywhere that's not in New York City, San Diego, or Chicago without a car, and you'll be spending a lot of time waiting or being herded where others want you to go. And you'd better plan in advance, because the bus isn't stopping at that quaint roadside diner you just saw.
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Try getting anywhere in America that's not in New York City, San Diego, or Chicago without a car, and you'll be spending a lot of time waiting or being herded where others want you to go.
There. Fixed that for ya. :)
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Most of your quaint roadside diners were eliminated by the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. People stop are herded along the interstate and only stop long enough for gas, mcdonalds, and starbucks.
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The current reliance on cars gives many areas the perfect excuse not to implement decent public transportation, which is pretty much why the US has terrible public transportation.
Cars may only be an excuse. I've lived in two different cities where opposition to public transit improvements came from people who wanted to keep their white upper middle class suburbs free of "others." In both cases the improvements would have allowed people living in poor (and mostly nonwhite) areas easy access to upper middle class enclaves. There's a reason people pay a lot of money to live in upscale areas. Aside from the nice landscaping and large homes the main motivation seems to be to get away
Re:Part of a general pattern (Score:4, Insightful)
I know I'm stating the obvious for many readers. But that's because post WW2, oil was cheap, and driving equated to the ultimate form of personal freedom. So much freedom in fact that the suburbs were created in that time period too. Of course, cheap energy wont last forever. I can't predict what will happen in the future with regards to transportation, but I can predict that the current status quo will not last.
The problem wasn't our desire for freedom and independence with how we lived our lives. The problem was the instruments of energy we chose to achieve that without a clear vision or plan in mind to maintain it.
The low-hanging fruit in this equation is freight. If we could move a large portion of the long-distance freight to Rail, it would (1) relieve the interstate system and (2) save a lot of oil, since rail miles per gallon per ton is about 435. An 18-wheeler can transport about 36 tons and gets something like 7 or 8 mpg, which is about 250 miles per gallon per ton. Of course, there are other factors, such as the fact that the train will probably have a slightly longer route and that you will still need local delivery, but the potential savings, financial and ecological, are high.
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cheap energy didn't last forever.
FTFY
I am an oil geologist ; finding new reserves is getting harder, and un-explored or under-explored areas are getting fewer and further from market - which is my specialism, and why I work intercontinentally and inter-hemispherically.
Actually ... you've just proposed a problem for me - is there a hemisphere on the Earth where I haven't worked, and if there is, what would it's
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As soon as solar and wind becomes cheap and efficient enough the natural gas and coal devoted to power production will be able to go toward syngas and Diesel production.
I don't think so. It is a Catch 22. If we could magically jump to 50% renewable tomorrow, that would make the price of oil, coal and natural gas go DOWN. This would make biofuels of all kinds relatively more expensive, including syngas and biodiesel. Regular diesel would be cheaper, but the US taxes it heavily (to capture funds from truc
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You forgot about the cost of pollution. Oil and coal are artificially cheap because the people who use them to pollute don't directly pick up the cost, so the government has to step in with taxes.
Politics will drive the move to renewable too. In Japan there is more opposition to nuclear than ever now, so projects for generating energy from alternative sources are being accelerated. Japan doesn't have much in the way of natural resources like coal or gas and space based solar looks to be the way forward ther
Re:Part of a general pattern (Score:4, Interesting)
Solar and wind will never replace coal or nuclear.
Wind is far too inefficient (something like on average 25% of a given rating is actually produced) So 1MW are only really good for 250KW So to replace say a single nuclear plant you need several thousand wind turbines. Going bigger actually makes things worse. And the land and water areas required will make every cringe.
Direct solar is also horribly ineffeceint(20% for a given amount of space) and requires huge flat areas to work.
Solar Salt stands a decent chance, It still requires huge land areas however it can at least get up to decent MW levels.
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Energy from nuclear reactors is not cheap at all. Even if you try to ignore the risk of a disaster, nuclear reactors are incredibly expensive to build and decommission and the story of cheap nuclear energy is a pipe dream that was never realized.
Why do you think the nuclear lobby complains about Congress? There is no law on the books against building new nuclear plants. Of course you have to get the permits, but Congress does not give those out, the various government agencies do, and they usually do give o
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Fukushima was built in the late 60s, when nuclear was the wave of the future. But rather than build new reactors and decommission old ones they run those same old reactors until they literally fall apart. Nuclear power construction has improved since then but the only people getting new, updated, clean reactors aren't Japan or the US. If anything Fukushima residents should be blaming TEPCO first and the government second. The former should have shut it down ages ago and the latter should be authorizing new
Re:Part of a general pattern (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what they said about the first generation of nuclear reactors. "Too cheap to meter" was the phrase. But we're still in the situation where heating a house using electricity is an expensive option, and even the 'cheap' option of natural gas heating is too expensive for some people during the winter.
Nuclear reactors exist within an electricity market and will sell their electricity for whatever they can get for it. They also have to make sure that over the lifetime of the plant, they save up enough cash to fund the extensive decommissioning process at the end of the plant's life.
I'll believe in "too cheap to meter" when I see it.
Electric grid primitive? Compared to what? (Score:3)
Compared to what's possible/needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to know which country has an electric grid that makes the US grid look primitive.
I don't think it's so much that the US grid is primitive compared to other countries. Rather it is primitive compared with the available technology and projected needs. The monitoring and control equipment on much of the grid remains rather primitive, the wire infrastructure is fragile (major outages every time a serious storm blows through), many areas still depend on sending a person out to read the meter for billing, there is a too much interdependence without adequate safeguards [wikipedia.org], local generation (solar, wind, etc) remains problematic in many places, generation sources are relatively dirty, usage controls are primitive, etc. Most of our infrastructure was built decades ago and (IMO) too little was allocated for ongoing upgrades nor were the increases in demand adequately planned for.
The grid works but it's not nearly as robust, efficient or clean as it could be. That's the problem.
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That depends where you live. Around here the power is rarely out for more than a moment, and even those times are infrequent. And really the only reason we notice at all anymore is because we're more used to having devices like computers that can reveal a power outage over night.
But in general, the power grid is what you make of it, if you're utility sucks, then you're going to get poor reliability. Around here we have a public utility which handles it and they by and large do a good job.
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In France, I have a server in my garage. I moved recently, so I got a downtime, but it is the norm to get more than a year of uptime between power outages. I've lived a bit in the SF bay area, and what I got there was very very far from that. Not counting rolling blackouts, we'd rarely get two month without an outage.
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Almost all major Western countries are suffering the same problem. Just because they're all equipped with the same primitive grid systems, it doesn't make it any less of a problem.
The grids as they stand were mostly designed 60 years to a century ago, principally for powering a few factories and keeping the street lights on. They just aren't designed for handling the intermittent power generation from renewables like wind or solar, or dealing with the intense surges that come of quickly charging large batte
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I have never seen the voltage on my outlets vary, except for an occasional complete fail (due to a tripped fuse or something). My CFL bulbs seem to have the expected lifetime. I live in the
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Actually five grids.
Two major, three minor.
Western Interconnection and Eastern Interconnection are the two major, the three minor interconnections are the Québec Interconnection, the Texas Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection.
Western and Eastern currently have six DC connections and a giant connection is being built between Texas, Eastern and Western - Tres Amigas SuperStation was announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas Interconnections via three 5 GW superconductor link
Re:Electric grid primitive? Compared to what? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it's the piss poor domestic voltage (110V P-E) that necessitates using 2 phase supplies for domestic electric heating, the occasional domestic installations rated for 50 amps (5.5kW) and the un-earthed non-polarised plug / sockets? Or maybe it's just the yearly summer rolling blackouts?
Coming from a country where you can run a 3kW power-tool from a single phase domestic plug / socket combo, then when your done quickly boil water in an electric tea kettle to make a nice hot drink, and at the end of the day wash yourself clean in a 10kW electric shower I can say that the US domestic supply at least looks pretty fucking dismal.
110V domestic voltage? Ungrounded, non-polarized plugs? 50A service? Are you referring to North America? If so, you're woefully misinformed, or ignorant, or both. With minor exceptions domestic service is 220V split phase. While most things in American households run on 110V (one half or the other of the 220V split phase) electric appliances like water heaters, stoves, ovens, and clothes dryers, run on 220V. Current building codes require grounded, polarized outlets, and the only place you find ungrounded, unpolarized outlets are old buildings that haven't been upgraded. Most new construction gets 200A service, and like the outlets, the only place you find mere 50A or 100A service is in older homes that haven't upgraded their service.
And I shower with water, not electricity. ;-)
Re:Electric grid primitive? Compared to what? (Score:4, Informative)
You'll notice I wrote 110v(P-E) as in phase to earth, the hilarious American "split-phase" system is merely a testimony to how poor your domestic supply.
It's hard to jingoism your way around facts, but you still made a good go of it.
It is true that in the US we use the three wire Edison system and that it does have 110v to earth while in much of Europe they use straight 220v with one side earthed. But exactly how the transformer secondary is earthed does not change the amount of available power. The Edison system simply makes it possible to easily have both 220v and 110v in the same building.
Your statement that the US system "necessitates the use of 2-phase supplies for domestic heating" is true, but I do not see how this is a disadvantage. All you are saying is that one must connect the two supply conductors of a large electric heater to the proper terminals in the service panel so that it will receive 220v. So what?
(Aside to US electricians: I know that in your trade split 110v/220v supply is considered single phase. The poster is calling it two-phase because the two hot wires are 180 degrees out of phase. If we were to use strictly consistent terminology, the very old 110 volt only service has a single phase 110 volts from neutral, almost all houses now have two phases 180 degrees apart at 110 volts from neutral, and many office buildings have three phases 120 degrees apart, often at 110 volts with respect to neutral.)
As other posters have pointed out, you are wrong about water heaters. Only the very smallest are ever connected to a 110 volt supply. You are correct in your statements about electric tea kettles and power tools. Since almost all outlets in the typical American home are wired between one of the phases and the neutral, they can only deliver about 1500 watts.
I suspect that the justification for the Edison system is that 110 volts is less dangerous than 220 volts. This system provides a (supposedly) safer 110 volts for most plug-connected devices while still making 220 volts available for those things that need it.
In other words, your complaint is not with the US electrical distribution network, but with the fact that 110 volt outlets predominate in the US home.
I believe the biggest disadvantages of the US system are that it requires wires twice as thick and that many appliances (such as air conditioners) that should be running on 220 volts run on 110 volts because the manufactures know that few users would buy them if they had to install a 220 volt outlet in order to use them.
Finally, yes, there are 50 amp 220 volt/110 volt service panels still out there. At least in New England they are now very rare. 60 amp was standard in the 1960's and nothing less than 100 amp is installed today.
Re:Electric grid primitive? Compared to what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation:
Oh my god, I can't stand ANYTHING about my country not being the best out of all the countries ever; I'd better come up with some excuse to get defensive and turn it into a bad thing about the other countries so mine is best again!
Yes, there are reasons Europe's grid is better. That doesn't mean it's not...better. The GP was arguing that it wasn't better.
Seriously, not everything is about your smug sense of nationalistic superiority. You didn't design the fucking grid; what's it to you anyway if somebody says it's bad? Fix it, or accept that it's bad but you're going to focus on other things. Don't pretend that it's a good thing because Hitler. Or some damn thing.
Re:Electric grid primitive? Compared to what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is clear from what I wrote that, had we had the fortune to deploy our power grid from scratch commencing 1945
Europe had to rebuild much of it's infrastructure in the 20th century, in some areas twice, which cost's a lot of money and time, and still we managed.
What's your excuse for not getting your system up to date?
You didn't have the same drawbacks that we did.
GP is right: You are one of those people that take any factual statement as a personal insult and lash out.
US freight rail is doing very well (Score:5, Informative)
The US has a freight rail system that is the envy of Europe. [economist.com] (Europe is ahead in passenger rail, but that loses money.) Intermodal traffic (containers) is way up over the last decade, and profitable. There's new rail construction going on, and rails and locomotives have been upgraded in recent years.
Modern large locomotives [getransportation.com] use what are essentially giant computer-controlled servomotors to drive the wheels, so that all the wheels on all the locomotives stay in sync and share the load equally, which means they can all be torqued up to just below where they start to slip. This means fewer locomotives per train, little or no wheel slip, and the ability to coordinate many locomotives spread throughout a train.
Last year, Union Pacific ran a train 3.5 miles long [youtube.com] from Los Angeles to Denver. Average freight train length in the US is now 6500 feet and climbing. That replaces a lot of trucks. Since Los Angeles built a no-grade-crossing rail connection to the port there, far fewer trucks are moving to the port.
Europe still has a lot of little 2-axle freight cars. Those disappeared from US trackage some time before World War Two, replaced by the standard big four-axle cars still used today. The bigger cars are also stronger, with a consistent minimum coupler strength, which means longer trains are possible.
Mixing high speed passenger trains and freight on the same track cuts severely into freight capacity. Each passenger train uses up the track time of six freights.
Re:US freight rail is doing very well (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, one of the reasons passenger rail isn't taking off in the US is because it consistently gets bumped by freight rail.
Our little Sounder commuter train from Seattle to Everett is constantly pre-empted for freight traffic-- usually mile-long trains hauling nothing but smelly garbage-- and its reliability is so bad, I finally just gave up and moved back to the bus. Considering the train runs 2/3rds empty every day, I'm not the only one.
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Yep, it is truly impressive to see these trains. I play golf at a course next to the rail lines that head out from LA to Cajon Pass. The trains have 4 diesels in front and two in the rear and all working hard to make the grade that has begun.
Actually business took rail seriously (Score:3)
the US government was not building rail lines. The majority of rail lines built in the 180s were done by private businesses, many without any grants or federal assistance. As such we have an abundance of rail still to this day for moving freight. As society improved roads became dominant because people valued their freedom, freedom to travel and where to live, all within their means.
I don't understand why so many bemoan out passenger train service. There are only two profitable lines in the world and all th
Re:Rail is best for heavy freight (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the energy losses at ~200 mph, are aerodynamic, not friction. Rail does not help there.
Even here Rail helps. If you have a 1600 passenger train half full, you have only one front with air friction per 800 passengers. With cars seated two each you need already 400 fronts where each one creates its own air friction. So even the most aerodynamically perfect cars wont come close to a single train even with no consideration going into air friction.
as Great Great Great Stephen P. Jobs the 1st said: (Score:2)
Slight delay here? (Score:2)
Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 1886, the railroad network in the southern United States was converted
Isn't that something like 21 years after they lost "The War of Northern Aggression" known by Ken Burns and the yankees as "The Civil War"?
Give me 21 years to pre-plan and pre-position supplies and workers and I can probably pull 11500 miles of CAT-5 in 2 days.
Re:Slight delay here? (Score:4, Informative)
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Sherman did what was necessary to end the war sooner. Tearing up the South's rail net, as these things go, was no atrocity.
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Great, first Truthers, then Birthers, then Deathers and now Sumterers.
In other news (Score:2)
"This month ends with the -125th anniversary of one of the most remarkable achievements in the technology future. Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 2136, the gui manager for the linux desktop was converted from the old-earth version one to one compatible with the slightly narrower one used in the space federation. The shift was meticulously planned and executed. It required one side of every gui to be moved three inches closer to the other. All font sets had to be adjusted as well. Some minor animatio
There is only one true BROAD GAUGE (Score:2, Troll)
and that is the 7ft 0.25in of Brunel's GWR.
anything else is just a sham.
Re:There is only one true BROAD GAUGE (Score:5, Funny)
Because nothing says "awesome" like being named "Kingdom". Until somebody trades you for a horse.
John C. Gault? (Score:2)
Is it just me or is it a little amusing that the guy who was telling them that the 4 ft. 9 in. gauge wasn't necessarily a good idea was named John C. Gault?
I wonder if Ayn Rand had any idea.
Victories of Standardization (Score:2)
How did they do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
How did they get the work done on time? How many people were involved?
11,500 miles/track is around 32 million railroad spikes that have to be pulled and respiked in the new location. If it takes one person 20 seconds to pull a spike and rehammer it in, it would take a crew of 16,000 people working 16 hour shifts to do the work in 3 days. And this is only the guys that are doing the spiking, it ignores the thousands of others that would be involved in moving (and lengthening/shorting curved sections when necessary) the rails, altering the running stock gauge and handling the supply logistics for materials, food, water, housing, etc for these large teams. So maybe 20,000 - 25,000 workers were involved?
Re:How did they do it? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's what's written in a history of the Illinois Central Railroad. Note that this re-gauging, On Friday, July 29, 1881, predates the one mentioned in the summary by several years.
"Most railroads in Illinois conformed to the Illinois Central gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches, commonly known as the English, or standard, gauge. But in the South the gauge of nearly all railroads...was five feet.
"Owing to the difference of three and one-half inches between the gauges at the Ohio River, sleeping cars, passenger cars, passenger coaches, baggage cars, and the freight cars employed in service from the completion of the rail route in 1873 were designed and fitted so that cars could be run over specially constructed dual gauge tracks at Cairo, jacked up and converted from standard to wide gauge, or vice versa, by removing one set of trucks and installing another on each trip.
"In the spring of 1881, Clarke, having obtained authority to undertake the conversion, announced a plan which was without precedent in the history of American railroading -- a plan to change the gauge of the entire 550-mile line between East Cairo and New Orleans in the same day -- in fact, within a few hours! This was the first Southern railroad east of the Mississippi River and one of the first in the entire country to change from wide to standard gauge..." ...
"To complete the herculean task, more than 3,000 men were distributed along the line. The work began as soon as it was light enough to see, and by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, every rail had been spiked into place in what the Railroad Gazette described as the 'the greatest feat ever accomplished in gauge changing!'
"Describing the methods employed, the Gazette said: ...
'The west rail was moved inward 3-1/2 inches. All the spikes on the inside of rails to be changed had already been drawn, except the spike in every fourth tie on the straight lines and every third tie on curves. Spikes for the new gauge were already driven in every fourth tie and third. All necessary spikes were distributed on the ends of the ties into which they were to be driven. Each section foreman was furnished with a narrow-gauge hand-car and a full set of tools."
"Clarke's feat was hailed as a "truly wonderful achievement," and in 1884-1886 when other Southern railroads began to lay plans for converting their lines to standard gauge, the leaned heavily on his instructions and experience."
Source:
Main Line of Mid-America
The Story of The Illinois Central Railroad
Carlton J. Corliss
Creative Age Press
1950
At the risk of invoking Godwin (Score:5, Informative)
Re:At the risk of invoking Godwin (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, they did. But it took *time*, and they couldn't do everything. The German railroad units mostly concentrated on advancing maybe half-a-dozen railheads for the entire Eastern Front. By the time winter started in 1941, advancing German forces had completely outrun the slowly reconstructed railways and were in considerable supply difficulties because of that.
Mil specs live forever (Score:3)
Gauge shift on the trans mongolian railway (Score:5, Interesting)
I took the trans mongolian railway from Moscow to Beijing about 10 years ago. One memorable experience is that near the border between Russia and Mongolia (or Mongolia and China i forget) they will change the bogie's on the entire train because the gauges differ in russia and china. The entire trainset is lifted up; the bogies moved out and new ones put in place. A very memorable experience.
Railfan.net moved their content... (Score:3)
What I can't figure out. (Score:4, Funny)
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It needs to be done once again when larger areas want to connect. And then continents.
Europe - Asia no problemo
N.A. - Australia this is getting difficult
S.A. - Antarctica now that's ridiculous.
Arguably with intermodal all that really matters is container size, since you'll be switching transport providers every couple thousand miles anyway.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Interesting)
Ooo can I reply to the troll?
Yep. I sure want to leave Australia and move back to the US. I'm getting so sick of the higher salaries, greater number of holidays, mandated 4-6 weeks of annual leave, the more casual work-to-live culture, cleaner environment, low crime rate, higher life expectancy, affordable healthcare, booming economy, 1-5% unemployment (depending on State), good food, having decent quality TV news and current affairs (ABC/SBS), stronger consumer protection laws, massively lower poverty rate, having more choice in phone and internet services, not getting nudie-scanned or groped at airports, oh the list goes on. I'm just itching to get out of here!
Ok so that's a bit tongue-in-cheek - I'm a dual American and Australian citizen and still spend a lot of time in both countries. No emi/immigration required for me. And there's still stuff that the US has Australia beat at. The highway system there is better than in Australia (which suffers from having a huge area but not a huge population/tax base to fund things from). The cost of living (particularly housing) is less too (though, wages are lower which offsets some of that advantage). The natural environment is also more diverse (don't get me wrong - Australia is beautiful, but it simply doesn't have the diversity of environments and climates that the US/North America does).
But at this point in time I don't think you'd find to many Australians wanting to emigrate to the US. Perhaps the very wealthy, who would like to take advantage of the lower income tax for high earners. But Australia has been incredibly prosperous for the last decade or two - the middle class along with the rich. The financial crisis didn't even scratch it. Not surprisingly, it consistently ranks as one of the top handful of places to be (both in 'economic' and 'quality of life' indices).
Having said that, there is a HUGE number of Australian tourists in the US in the last year or so. This is because it's now incredibly cheap to do so: the AUD is worth more than the USD for the first time in history (thanks to the US Fed printing USD like it's going out of style). The buying power of the AUD in the US is huge at the moment. Combined with generally higher Aussie wages and the already-low prices of goods in the US, it's a shopping bonanza. I have guys at work ask me to get clothes and running shoes and stuff for them when I visit the US because due to the currency movements it's literally less than half the cost. Hell, for big ticket items, it'd be cheaper to fly to the US, buy it, and fly back, than to buy it locally...
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:4, Interesting)
Most Australians travel internationally quite regularly. Not just to the US. Not every country is like the US where only a tiny proportion of people have a passport.
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It needs to be done once again when larger areas want to connect. And then continents. And again until we actually get the whole world to use the same. And by that time trains are obsolete already.
When it comes to trains the US is "all aboard" the standards express, but when it comes to the metric system, nada.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:4, Interesting)
I always thought the best gauge for trains was the standard N-gauge. I still have my Rock Island Golden Rocket in a box down in the basement. My gramps was an engineer for the Rock Island and I rode it from Chicago to the West Coast several times as a kid. What a magnificent train that was. It had a 12-bedroom sleeper car called La Palma and it was like taking a room at the Four Seasons from Union Station to Los Angeles. You'd fall asleep crossing the Mississippi at St Louis, lulled by the gentle motion and wake up in the Rockies.
The coffee in the dining car ("El Comedor") was a special blend. It was served in those silver pots with heavy, short beige and red china that said "Golden Rocket". Delicious roasted potatoes and pork chops. Man, that was one sexy way to travel. Screw Southwest Airlines. If there were still decent passenger trains in the US, I'd never sit in another cramped 737 with a smelly fat-ass on either side of me eating cardboard extruded cookies.
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Ireland, however, uses 5' 3". Fortunately we are an island, with no rail intercommunication with anywhere else :-)
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Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Insightful)
And by that time trains are obsolete already.
I really rather doubt trains are ever going to be obsolete, barring us figuring out cheap teleportation. There's simply no better method of moving stuff en masse across land.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Funny)
Rouge nations? Would that be the Kingdom of Maybelline, the Covergirl Islands, or the Republique de l'Oreal?
And what's a "guage"? It sounds french. Do you pronounce it "goo-aj", "g-ow-gh", or "joo-a-jee"?
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Don't yuo hate when poeple invert thier diphthongs?
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depends how overweight they are
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Obviously, your education was lacking in firearms training and the study of railroads. You should have put a couple years in the Navy. You would have learned that a riot gun is actually a 12 guage shotgun, and that a 5 inch 54 caliber gun's chamber is 54 inches long, and 5 inches diameter where it necks down into the barrel.
First "g" is hard, the "au" is a long "a" second "g" is soft. End it right there - the "e" is silent. I guess you could sound it out if I were to spell it G-A-J-E.
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And perhaps you should have paid attention in your English classes. It's "gauge [wikipedia.org]", not "guage". There's no such word as "guage" in the English language.
Wooshed by the wooshed (Score:4, Funny)
Wooshed! by he who himself was wooshed.
Also, for those who can't tell, I inverted the "o"s in woosh for added effect.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Interesting)
To be pedantic, when referring to artillery, and specifically naval artillery, a 5"/54 caliber gun would have a barrel length of 270 inches; as the 54 refers to the number of diameters that the barrel is long, not the chamber length.
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It could still aid rail car manufacturing, which is an international industry with orders for trains in one country from companies in a different country.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Informative)
And of course there isn't much rail traffic currently between europe and russia, the rail stock uses different gauges.
Not exactly. In fact the rolling stock exchanges the wheels at the borders. The whole waggon gets liftet from the bogies, the bogies are rolled away, new bogies of the right gauge are rolled in, and the waggon gets eased down on the new bogies.
The TALGO train which is used between Spain and France has adjustable wheels to adapt to the different gauges.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:5, Funny)
And, how do you pronounce 'savages'?
WINN-dohs YUZ-ers
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Re:Only a few left.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, I see you use the Microsoft theory of "standard" aka: make shit up that doesn't match what anyone else is doing, then try to force everyone to follow.
(yes, I know you were being factious, so was I.)
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Date format is stupid all around the world. Everyone should just use 2011-05-08 15:00. Yes, drop the stupid am/pm stuff too.
Try: 1500 08-05-2011
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No, little-endian makes more sense because it's consistent. In your example, you've got a big-endian super-format, where each of the constituents are little-endian. That's just stupid.
And there's already a standard for dates. ISO 8601. It's basically what the parent described.
Re:Only a few left.... (Score:4, Interesting)
English speech states the year last, and tends to have the month first.
Interestingly, not in countries which use the DD/MM/YYYY format. In the UK, it is quite uncommon to hear "May the 8th 2011", and far more common to hear "8th of May 2011".
I've often wondered about that in a chicken-and-egg sort of way. Was it the American turn of phrase, with the month first, that led to the US MM/DD/YYYY annotation, or is it the fact that the MM/DD/YYYY annotation is a US standard that has led people to adopt that turn of phrase? And vice versa for the UK?
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Mosyt of those, there are clear advantage to. easy base conversion and unit creation, unambiguous and lexical-chronological sorting equivalence, more than 4bil addresses respectively
is there some clear advantage to 240v 50hz AC?
Re:Only a few left.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, 277/480V is quite common in the states for commercial and industrial uses. You can get it in your house too if you are willing to pay for it, but most people are not since there isn't any compelling reason to do so. The monthly ser
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Re:Only a few left.... (Score:5, Informative)
is there some clear advantage to 240v 50hz AC?
No. Frequency is largely irrelevant. The only common (although probably not so much anymore) residential application I can think of are wall clocks with synchronous motors using the line frequency to keep time. Increasing the voltage would give you more usable power out of your common 15/20A household branch circuit, but that's it. Perhaps you could lower the total number of branch circuits by going to higher voltage, but I don't know how many people would really care that they have 1/3 fewer breakers. Or you have crazy ass things like the UK ring circuit [wikipedia.org].
Take a look at a lot of your electronics and you'll see that they probably accept a "universal input" of 50/60Hz between 100-240VAC. One distinct advantage higher frequency has is allowing smaller size of components like transformers. This is why you'll see things like 115VAC @ 400Hz in aircraft [wonderquest.com].
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Some linear power supplies (think transformer, diode bridge, caps) that are designed for 60Hz will fail in ugly ways with 50Hz power. The current capacity of the transformer is reduced, and for power supplies that are already heavily loaded (which is disturbingly common for unregulated supplies) this can push them over the edge. (Not to mention the effects that frequency has on the desired size of filter caps, which might also be insufficient at 50Hz)
Much of the audio gear I have would be unhappy at 50Hz.
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Yeah, but there is any advantage on 50Hz? Or any disadvantage? Or any kind network effect?
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50Hz requires more iron in the core of power transformers than 60Hz. Similar effects apply to motors. Now that consumer electronics have switched to high frequency switching supplies, that's not much of an issue for the end user. It does still matter for the transformers used in the power grid to step down from higher distribution voltages to lower domestic voltages.
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A friend once bought a laser printer in the US (60Hz) and took it to New Zealand (50Hz). The power supply handled the 120v to 240v issue, but the motor that fed the paper through the system couldn't handle the frequency difference so that when he printed, the image on the pages was compressed because the paper moved too slowly.
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Houses are already wired for 240v, just not most appliances so not most outlets. Few residential applications use synchronous motors, so the frequency doesn't matter much (beyond higher frequencies allowing smaller transformers). And at least mainland North American countries all use the same plug.
Re:Only a few left.... (Score:5, Funny)
wow that must be one mother of a plug
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Fire marshal had a heart attack when he saw all the daisy chained power strips.
Re:Only a few left.... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, as long America is a British Empire Colony, no way to explain them the beautiful simplicity of the Metric system.
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Funny but you do know standard gauge is not a metric standard. So when is Europe going to finish it's move to metric and change all their rail road tracks to some metric standard?
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Since it started driving higher currents through the same resistance (in this case the human body)
It's very difficult to design your outlets to limit the current that will go through a human without limiting what will go through an electronic device, however lower voltages have less ability to overcome the same resistance to cause large amounts of current to flow through the heart (which is usually the important bit in the "killing" part)
110v can kill you, so can 5v, or 3000v. But if I had to choose, I'd mu
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Ah, yes arrogance. Let me guess - you're from Europe? That's the only part of the world that has the arrogance to insist everyone else should live, act, and think exactly like they do. Woe to the person(s) who don't.
I have to resist the urge to point out all the ways that Americans insist everyone else should live, act and think exactly as they do.
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Ah that's relatively easy. A harder problem is adjusting the radii of all those curves. The hardest part is stretching all the bridges, tunnels, and viaducts 3 inches wider. And X crossings. Even station platforms might have to be moved...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia [wikipedia.org]
Try building a bridge that can take an earthquake and then have a planned life span of 150 years.
http://baybridgeinfo.org/projects/sas-tower [baybridgeinfo.org]
Sure, it was cheap, only $77mil.. But you might have been lucky to make $0.50/hour
Adjusting for inflation that's 1.1 billion, and the thing failed in a 7.1 earthquake. Imagine what would have happened if the 9.0 that hit Japan happened in SF.