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."
Re:Only a few left.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Rail is best for heavy freight (Score:1, Interesting)
Railroad's advantage is in lower friction than rubber tire on cement. That is maximized with slow freight railroads, which the United States has among the best in the world. Most of the energy losses at ~200 mph, are aerodynamic, not friction. Rail does not help there.
Also, high speed transport, including all air transportation, is a fraction of the boring highways. Less than 1 percent of freight travels by air. High speed transportation is more of a luxury. I thus think it is quite logical for the United States not to have high speed rail.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Re:And still shortsighted (Score:4, Interesting)