- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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Forums poster donoteat has managed to ride the leftist internet money-wagon to the fabled promised land; having a c-spam thread made. He did this by making interesting, insightful, and funny videos about urbanism, socialism, unionism, and various other isms that are cool and hip now.
His current series uses City and Skylines to grow a fictional city, called Franklin, which bears a passing resemblance to my home of Philadelphia, from its historical roots as a native village near a river all the way up to the modern era. Along the way, donoteat tackles topics from a left perspective while citing the historical movements, events, and changes that influence Franklin.
The next video incoming will be about Killdozer, which was a zoning dispute at its heart, and then next up will be Amtrak.
Primarily, this thread is for talking about urbanism and development. but that shits boring, so also talk about T R A I N S
The Youtube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFdazs-6CNzSVv1J0a-qy4A
The Patreon where you can give donoteat all of your money and he will spend it on beer:
https://www.patreon.com/donoteat/overview
Medium:
https://medium.com/@donoteat
TRAINS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tLxb5rtmyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVMsAgHy_IY
Laphroaig has issued a correction as of 16:58 on Oct 4, 2018
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Oct 4, 2018 16:56
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Apr 27, 2024 20:48
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-trains
1. The term “horsepower” originated as a marketing tool.
James Watt didn’t invent the steam engine, but he did create the world’s first modern one, and developed the means of measuring its power. In the 1760s, the Scottish inventor began tinkering with an earlier version of the engine designed by Thomas Newcomen. Newcomen’s design required constant cooling down and re-heating, wasting vast amounts of energy. Watt’s innovation was to add a separate condenser, greatly improving the engine’s efficiency. A savvy salesman, Watt knew that he needed a way to market his new product. He calculated how much power a single horse working in a mill could produce over a period of time (though many scientists now believe his estimates were far too high), a figure that he dubbed “horsepower.” Using this unit of measurement, he then came up with a figure that indicated how many horses just one of his engines could replace. The sales ploy worked—we’re still using the term “horsepower” today—and his engines soon became the industry standard, leading directly to invention of the first steam locomotive in 1804.
3. Trains helped the North win the American Civil War.
Throughout the war, railroads enabled the quick transport of large numbers of soldiers and heavy artillery over long distances. One of the most significant uses of trains came after the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, when Abraham Lincoln was able to send 20,000 badly needed replacement troops more than 1,200 miles from Washington, D.C. to Georgia (in just 11 days) to fortify Union forces—the longest and fastest troop movement of the 19th century. Control of the railroad in a region was crucial to military success, and railroads were often targets for military attacks aimed at cutting off the enemy from its supplies. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman provided particularly adept at the art of railroad sabotage. During his infamous “March” through Georgia and the Carolinas, his men destroyed thousands of miles of Confederate rails, leaving heaps of heated, twisted iron that southerners wearily referred to as “Sherman’s neckties.”
6. The railroads also gave us standardized time zones.
Britain adopted a standardized time system in 1847, but it took nearly 40 more years before the United States joined the club. America still ran on local time, which could vary from town to town (and within cities themselves), making scheduling arrival, departure, and connection times nearly impossible. After years of lobbying for standardized time, representatives from all major U.S. railways met on October 11, 1883, for what became known as the General Time Convention, where they adopted a proposal that would establish five time zones spanning the country: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. The plan originally called for a fifth time zone, the Intercontinental, which was instituted several years later and became known as Atlantic Time. At noon on November 18, the U.S. Naval Observatory sent out a telegraph signal marking 12:00 pm ET, and railway office in cities and towns across the country calibrated their clocks accordingly. However, it wasn’t until 1918 that standard time became the official law of the land, when Congress passed legislation recognizing the time zone system (and instituting a new “daylight savings time” designed to conserve resources for the World War I war effort).
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Oct 4, 2018 17:00
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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I generally find that the only people who hold those views quickly lose them upon, say, working with actual humans and not just posting online all the time. You can get into a NY/LA bubble, I suppose, of huffing your own farts ideology, but you can only eat from that trashcan for so long.
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Oct 5, 2018 22:02
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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lol a thread for a good goonmade youtube channel couldn't even make it past the first page without people getting real mad at each other over nonsense
goonfriend, this is page 2, we clearly made it past the first hurdle and revisionist roaders like you will be sent to the trainyards for reeducation about wheel sizes, rail gauges, and how to properly read timetables
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Oct 9, 2018 16:14
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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also why doesn't this thread have the TRAINS tag
we go to post with the thread tags we have, not the thread tags we want.
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Oct 10, 2018 23:23
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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in honor of the spooky month, here is a spooky train story stolen from the OSHA thread
Oh, y'all want a derail? Let's get literal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Helena_train_wreck
I lived less than a mile from the wreck, as the crow flies. I also slept through it, but my parents were jolted out of bed and said they ran to the window only to see a nuclear-style mushroom cloud ascending into the sky. I woke up a few hours later, when the -30F degree temps, plus the fact that the door between the house and the uninsulated garage had gotten dislodged by the blast, made the house cold enough to wake me. We weren't evacuated per se, but we ended up taking refuge with my aunt and uncle in East Helena, since the power was out and the house bled off too much heat with the door open. We had friends in a nearby neighborhood whose windows were blown out. Hell of a thing to happen when it's that loving cold outside. The college was mega-hosed for a while due to blast damage. The local TV station is just downhill from the college, and for a decade or so, the busted up hulk of one of the exploded train cars was displayed behind a fence next door.
That no one died is kind of amazing. Even the explosion that tore apart downtown Bozeman in the 00s killed at least one person.
Oddly enough, there was a much worse wreck that originated in a similar area in 1906.
http://www.gendisasters.com/montana/5368/austin%2C-mt-train-wreck%2C-feb-1906
http://www.gendisasters.com/montana/5370/austin%2C-mt-train-wreck%2C-feb-1906-second-article
Highlights, from a much more brutal time in journalism (bolding mine):
FIVE KILLED IN AWFUL WRECK posted:
The passenger train preceded the freight out of Austin about eight miles west of Helena. At Austin the engine was detached from the freight. There is a heavy grade from Austin to Helena and the freight got loose. The passenger train was waiting at a crossing when the freight came thundering down. Before it could get out of the way the freight crashed into it throwing all the passenger cars into the ditch.
The passenger engine became uncoupled and kept on the track ahead of the freight. After the freight had got a quarter of a mile beyond the passenger wreck it went into the ditch and caught fire. A carload of shingles was dumped on the passenger train wreck, and made a terrific fire.
MESSENGER JESSUP was burned alive while four people were trying to pull him out of the wreck. He was caught under wreckage and could not be saved.
Austin is now a ghost town northwest of Helena. I went exploring up there one night, trying to find a dirt road route over the Continental Divide (don't judge my weird hobbies), got stuck when my car couldn't negotiate the forest service roads, and turned back. As I passed back through Austin, a train went by across the valley from me, and it was the eeriest thing. Nearly silent trains at night seem different from the ones going thru town in the daylight. Anyway, that's what prompted me to try and research the Feb 2, 1989 derailment from my childhood. That's when I ran across the stories from the Feb 6, 1906 derailment
quote:
DISASTROUS WRECK ON NORTHERN PACIFIC
PASSENGER TRAIN IS DEMOLISHED AND FIVE PERSONS ARE KILLED OR BURNED.
Helena, Mont., Feb. 6.-Unless other victims were totally incinerated leaving no vestige of their bodies behind, the total number of dead in last night's collision between a runaway freight on the Northern Pacific and the local passenger from Garrison at the Great Northern crossing near Helena, numbers five, as follows:
CHARLES BICKELL, conductor, Helena
J. F. ROBINSON, bridge carpenter.
EDWARD JESSUP, express messenger, Helena.
FOSTER SENECAL, butcher of Elliston.
Unknown passenger, sex undeterminable.
The injured:
JEFF BROWN, brakeman.
ERNEST ROSSMAN, butcher, Helena.
LENA ANDERSON, on the way from Wisconsin to Lewiston.
All will recover.
The through passenger train passed through Austin, about eight miles west of Helena, on time. Following it was a long freight train made up of box and flat cars loaded with lumber and shingles. At Austin the engine was uncoupled from the freight to take water and the train was left standing on the track. There is a steep grade east of Austin and by some means the freight train got started down the hill.
The passenger train when it arrived at the Montana Central crossing stopped when the engineer heard a sound behind him that warned him of danger. He started his train, but it had gone but a few feet when the freight crashed into the rear car. There were but two cars in the train and they were smashed and thrown into the ditch. The engine became uncoupled but did not leave the track and Engineer PELTY managed to keep ahead of the flying freight. The freight went probably five hundred feet when it, too, went off the track. In a few minutes fire started and for hours the cars and the lumber burned fiercely.
The crash of the collision was heard by persons living in the vicinity who immediately started for the wreck. When they got there an awful scene met their gaze. The combination car was on fire and pinned under a mass of wreckage was JESSUP. He was conscious and heroic efforts were made to release him from his situation. Finally the fire became so hot that the rescuers had to give up the task. JESSUP still conscious, cried: "It is hard to lie here and burn to death." He struggled to release himself as the fire took hold of his limbs, but the effort was fruitless and after a few screams of agony unconsciousness came to him.
Exposed to full view with blazing shingles all about him and his bed a mass of red hot coals, was the body of an unknown man. It was slowly consumed until all that was left was the skull, and, outstretched were two stumps that a few hours before had been arms.
There is supposed to have been eight passengers on the train, of which number two and are still unaccounted for.
"It is hard to lie here and burn to death," and that bit about the man with burned off stumps for arms, holy loving poo poo.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:49
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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give donoteat your dollar
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Oct 12, 2018 22:21
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brrT_NYKFMo
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Oct 14, 2018 04:47
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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It seemed well received so I’ll have a look at explaining Clapham Junction now. This one is a biggy so I think I’ll split it up. To really get the gist of what went wrong its worth going into a bit of detail about the basics of how signalling works.
The safety of UK railways is founded almost entirely on track circuit block and distance interval working. The basic principles of that are sound and allow trains to travel at high speeds extremely closely to each other with pretty much no prospect of any accident. At Clapham the basic principles of track circuit block went badly wrong.
When the railway was new safety was governed by time interval working, i.e. only a period of time separated trains. A train went along the track, a period of time was measured, then another train went along the track, and so on. You can see the problem. There was no method of any kind to communicate with the trains. So no one knew what had happened to that first train. It could have reached its destination hours ago and still no one knew. Or everyone involved could have been killed and no one knew. The time was measured, and the next train was sent.
If that sounds like an incredibly dangerous way of working that’s because it was. But don’t worry – you were much more likely to be killed by the basic technical problems on the engines themselves causing massive explosions than by them ever crashing into each other. So that’s nice.
Distance interval working was considerably safer. A measure of distance rather than time was used to separate trains. The train was sent, you waited until confirmation it had reached the next station, then the next train went. This required communication. Eventually it developed into signallers and signal boxes. Each signal box was responsible for one bit of track. They observed the train arrive and told the previous signal box it was there safely, and therefore crucially had vacated the track between the boxes. Then they asked the next signal box for permission to let the train proceed and if they received confirmation the track ahead was clear, they sent the train on its way.
This, incidentally, is why trains have red lights on the rear. Only by observing the red lights did the signaller know the whole train had arrived and that no divided coaches had been left in the section.
So we had distance interval working and absolute block sections – the railway was divided into sections and if a train was still in a section the next train wasn’t allowed to enter. The next step was track circuit block, which we still use for the most part. This involves an electrical current running through the tracks and connected to the signal – a track circuit. If that circuit has power the green light on the associated signal was lit and trains could enter that section of track. If that circuit lost power, i.e. because train wheels on the track shorted it out, the red signal was lit and trains were therefore told they had no permission to enter that section because it was still occupied. That means every train would be automatically protected in the rear by a red light by very straightforward electrical circuits. In theory.
The only thing to then be added was cautionary aspects where necessary. If a signal was red the signal ahead automatically turned to single yellow, which warned the driver to begin braking. If you have four aspect signalling the signal ahead of the single yellow displayed two yellows – prelimary caution. This means drivers no longer have to be able to react and stop in only a sightlines distance, they can reduce their speed miles before needing to stop because they have been warned of the approaching red signal several signals beforehand. This allows trains to run closer together at higher speeds.
That is no doubt not entirely accurate as a historical picture. But it gives the rough direction of how and why things have developed in the way they have.
On Monday 12th December 1988 several drivers on the northbound approach to Clapham Junction say signal WF138 changed as they approached it. This isn’t unusual in itself. If the train ahead is moving forward you would expect track circuits to become clear as the train moves, causing signals to go from red to yellow, etc. However many of them saw it go from green to double yellow, or double to single yellow. None reported it. There were plausible explanations in their minds for every change, for instance the signaller could have routed a train ahead of them somewhere. The rule book at the time was very vague and only said they had to report irregularities that could be a danger to another train. As they all had reasonable stories in their heads for the change the prospect of danger to trains wasn’t obvious.
However eventually Driver McClymont on the train from Basingstoke witnessed signal WF138 turn from single yellow to red in front of them. They were unable to stop and went past it. This was a signal passed at danger, even if it wasn’t his fault, so he had to report it immediately. He stopped the train at the next signal, WF47 – the last signal before Clapham Junction station, to use the Signal Post Telephone and report it to Signaller Cotter at the Clapham Junction signal box. WF138 then changed back to single yellow, despite the presence of the Basingstoke train on the track circuit controlling it.
Driver John Rolls on the service from Poole was driving normally to the signals he saw and approaching Clapham Junction at about 60mph. There was no data recorder on the train but an off duty driver was sitting in the back cab, which also has a live brake gauge and speedometer. The off duty driver saw the brake gauge go into emergency for a few seconds, and estimated the speed was about 35mph when the Poole train hit the Basingstoke train in a rear end collision.
Driver Rolls was killed along with 32 of the passengers sitting in the front three coaches. 69 people were seriously injured, two of whom later died from their injuries. 415 people suffered minor injuries. The first coach was subject to what the later report described as “complete disintegration”, and the following two coaches derailed. To make matters worse a set of empty coaching stock coming from Clapham on the adjacent line then struck the wreckage and also derailed. It’s not clear if this directly killed or injured anyone, but it definitely didn’t help.
Driver Pike on the train following Driver Rolls saw the wreckage ahead a few minutes later and applied the emergency brakes. He estimated he stopped 20 metres from the crash but it was later measured as more like 60. He walked back to signal WF138, which he had passed at proceed, and saw it was still displaying a single yellow, despite the presence now of three trains in total on the track circuit controlling it. He reported this to Signaller Cotter quite forcefully.
The signal box was examined later that day and it was found that the electrical relay for the track circuit for signal WF138 had an extraneous section of wire. This had intermittently connected current to the circuit when it should have been shorted, so it was still able to show proceed aspects despite the track circuit being occupied. Post two on how that wire came to be there.
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Oct 15, 2018 18:49
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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Part 2 on Clapham Junction:
The wiring on the relays had been put in by a signalling technician called Brian Hemingway two weeks before the crash. This was part of the Waterloo Area Resignalling Scheme (WARS), which had been planned and implemented from 1978 onwards. Waterloo is the busiest London rail terminal, as anyone who has watched the opening scenes of The Bourne Ultimatum knows (it’s the place where Paddy Considine gets shot). Clapham Junction is a major station on approach to Waterloo where the lines from Windsor, Wessex, and Sussex all join. It still proudly boasts it has the largest number of passenger interchanges per day in the whole of Europe.
The signalling for this whole area hadn’t been renovated since 1936. By 1978 the situation was bad. By 1988 it was desperate. So WARS was being implemented rapidly. This involved replacing and re-numbering a large number of signals, including WA25 which was to become WF138. This was done by Brian Hemingway on Saturday 27th November 1988. He put in the new wires but did not take out one of the old ones. He just cut it at one end – still attached at the other. He did not put insulating tape around the loose end, he just pushed it out of the way of the circuit.
This was surprisingly not a problem until two weeks later on, Sunday 11th December, when a wiring job was required, again as part of WARS, on the relay next to this one in the relay room. This disturbed the WF138 wire and allowed it to contact the circuit at its un-insulated end again. By chance the person conducting this work was Brian Hemingway again. On the following Monday morning, when the line was reopened, the signal displayed green or red entirely independently of what the track circuit was doing and instead dependent on whether the wire was making contact in the relay. For the early morning the train service was infrequent and even though the aspects were wrong there was sufficient space between trains that no crash was possible. When rush hour started the trains bunched up and it was only a matter of time before a proceed was shown when a train was physically stopped on that circuit. So the accident happened shortly after 8am. For this very reason the trains were also carrying more people. Over 1500 passengers were on Driver Rolls’ train from Poole.
Why did Brian Hemingway do the wiring job this badly? Some of the mistakes were ones it was later found he always made. Some were ones he made only the day and couldn’t account for.
He was asked why he hadn’t removed the old wire. His answer was he never did that. Not only that, no one who did the same job did that either, so far as he knew. He had never been trained to do that. He had never been questioned by an assessor or supervisor for not doing that. The importance of doing so was not clear to signalling technicians across the board. Anyone could have been doing that job on 27th November and made the same mistake, which is why the inquiry did not find him at fault despite that in his evidence he claimed full responsibility.
His training had been on the job. He’d been working for British Rail for years. Whilst new signalling technicians had a training course when they joined the older ones had not been put on it. Following a series of signal irregularities a few years before an instruction had gone out from BR Standards head office that all signalling jobs must include a count of wires left to ensure all the old ones had been removed. No one could demonstrate that Hemingway would ever have seen this. Even senior managers responsible for WARS weren’t aware this was an instruction. They thought it was a consultation paper, and did not distribute it to staff. In fact, as they thought it was a consulation paper they wrote back their disagreement with it and left it at that. No one from Standards followed it up.
Then there is the issue of his supervision. His supervisor on the day was Derek Bumstead, and the testing engineer was Peter Dray. Derek Bumstead turned out to be supervising in name only as he wasn’t present. Signalling and Telecomms (S&T) were short staffed so he was actually at another site working with a gang on the tracks. That was his style of management. He liked to muck in and help. Neither Hemingway or Bumstead had any expectation that Bumstead would check the work in the relay room. Peter Dray was responsible on paper for conducting testing for this area, but as WARS was a special project it wasn’t clear to him he was responsible for that work as well. A number of management reorganisations over the years had left it very unclear who was conducting quality assurance for what. It was inevitable stuff would get missed eventually.
So we come to the peculiar errors, like the lack of insulating tape. Hemingway reported he always used tape and had no idea why he hadn’t in this case. Remember I said he did the work on both Sunday 11th December and Saturday 27th November? Well in fact he had worked every day in between. Not only that, he had worked all but one day in the preceding three months. Out of 91 days he had worked 90 of them. A survey of technicians in his grade demonstrated that nearly a third had in fact worked every day over that period, and another third took one day off on average every two weeks. The pay wasn’t great so there was a large number of people who would do every hour of overtime they could.
This was in fact common across most grades. My uncle was a signaller in the 1980s and he tells stories now of regularly working nightshifts and getting a call towards the end of it asking if he could come back to cover a late shift just a few hours later. So he would go home, take my cousins to school, sleep for 2 or 3 hours, then go back to work in the signal box. One of the driving instructors I learnt with had been a driver for nearly 40 years. In the 1980s he said he would quite commonly not go home for 2-3 days at a time. He would drive trains, then sleep on a sofa in the messroom for a few hours, then drive trains again. There was no point even leaving the depot.
Local management were asked why they were running their staff into the ground like this. The answer was they were running out of time to get WARS done. It had been on the cards since 1978 but the planning for the actual wiring work for this stage of it wasn’t done until 1986. But even this meant the plan for what work would be done on what days was drawn up two years before the work happened. In that time staff levels changed, so to keep up they just offered more and more overtime to those who were left. Senior British Rail managers expressed shock and dismay, as all senior managers do in these circumstances, that those on the rung down could possibly have thought the project completion date was such an immovable deadline. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough at that. The fact of the matter was the railway ran on overtime. The railway ran on fatigue.
What did we learn?
Fatigue. This is the biggy. The inquiry into the disaster churned out recommendation after recommendation concerning crash worthiness, assurance, training, and risk assessment. In the middle of the 250 page report were just two sentences that basically changed the way the railways run. They required managers to monitor and account for all excessive working by staff.
This may not seem like much but the industry grabbed it with both hands. It's hard to think of anything more influential in the last 50 years in its scope. The report was written by Anthony Hidden, and even now the rules regarding working time on the railways are called the Hidden regulations, or even just "Hidden" (as in "that's a breach of Hidden" or "what does Hidden say about that?").
The rules are:
1. No more than 12 hours in a shift.
2. No more than 72 hours in any 7 day period
3. At least 12 hours rest before any safety critical shift.
4. No more than 13 days out of 14.
In actual fact these aren't even rules. In line with the rather mild tone of the recommendation they are at best guidelines. They can be breached if a manager is comfortable documenting and explaining the requirement to do so. Most railway staff don't understand it that way. It's become so embedded in railway culture that these are seen by most as hard and fast rules. Even those needing cash desperately won't bypass these guidelines for the most part.
Signal irregularities. Drivers are required to carry the RT3185 form at all times. In the event of a signal irregularity, which is now more clearly defined, they stop and call the signaller. The signaller and driver fill the form out together on the phone and both submit it to their managers. Certain types of failure are investigated immediately by technicians on the ground. Until they are satisfied train movements are heavily restricted. This is why signal failures are a massive pain in the arse from a delay point of view.
I will try and grab some photos and the report link asap. I appreciate that people find this interesting. I do too. I'm a fun guy at parties.
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Oct 15, 2018 19:00
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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If anyone is interested in the House of the Butterflies and the lead talk,
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/jan_2001/butterflies.pdf
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Oct 26, 2018 18:40
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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I just got to the CSB shoutout, woo ~
also, donoteat, what do you have against germany's social democrats green revolution of stopping nuclear power production, which at one point was providing 25% of their power, and switching to importing LNG from Russia, burning 'biomass', and of course, Clean Coal?
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Oct 26, 2018 19:59
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Architecture alone being unable to solve social problems doesn't stop architects from trying to solve social problems with architecture on a regular basis sadly
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Nov 21, 2018 06:31
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Just don't become a SF bike-Urbanist wearing $700 worth of designer spandex on a $5,000 bicycle, because those are some of the most insufferable people on the planet
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Jan 29, 2019 21:17
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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DoNotEat, when the IBEW local 98 video
edit:
http://www.philly.com/news/johnny-doc-john-dougherty-bobby-henon-ibew-local-union-philadelphia-investigation-city-council-20190130.html
all of the old, white, male, corrupt power brokers are falling one after another, I hope they can be replaced by new, fresher, but still corrupt young people; we must maintain the proud Philadelphia tradition
Laphroaig has issued a correction as of 19:07 on Jan 30, 2019
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Jan 30, 2019 19:03
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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I think a lot of the disagreement comes from the fact that in capitalist society "a robust liberal arts education" for the most part ranges from "not necessarily detrimental, but would have learned more about the world spending 3 months in a prison or a year at a lovely job than they did in 4 years at an elite institution" to "huffed farts for so long they can now justify the divine right of kings". You won't learn essential things like "how is union formed" or what "rent" and "surplus value" are (protip: theft).
College education is useful, but the biggest advantage of free college is that it removes the ability to use college education as a class signifier.
it will still be a class signifier, because you'll still have hyperelite and elite schools where the children of the elite go; you don't solve the problem of lack of class consciousness and the manufacture of the professional managerial class by making college free. The whole reason people want free college is aspirational within a capitalist system; you need the degree to do the thing else you won't be able to afford to do the thing, or you can only acquire the knowledge to do the thing via a strictly hierarchical arrangement etc.
In general the entire motivator for 9/10ths of the people even going to college, is to secure wage based employment. They're told from a young age that You Must Do This to get ahead, and only when they are adults do they turn around and say "I feel like I was tricked into this debt burden."
Making college free would just shift burdens and incentives around but won't fix the core societal problem of elitism in the oligarchy we currently live under.
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Feb 5, 2019 23:01
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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I would love a My Summer Car train simulator but the studio didn't make a good game previously
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Feb 7, 2019 21:47
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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The Philadelphia map is totally wrong and missing several regional rail spurs that replaced streetcars, like service to Chestnut Hill East and West, Norristown, etc.
http://www.septa.org/maps/system/
So that does make me question some of the other maps presented, since its clearly intentionally leaving off infrastructure because otherwise the before/after wouldn't support the narrative. Regional Rail is a hell of a lot more rapid transit than the old street cars.
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Apr 3, 2019 20:57
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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I dunno if you could say it "replaced" the trolley lines; both chestnut hill lines were put in before the 23 existed in its current form
We also lost a crapload of regional rail in that time -- the west chester line, the newtown line, service to allentown, bethlehem, reading, newark NJ, etc., all the PRSL lines out of camden broadway station, plus the vast majority of stops within the city limits when SEPTA/Conrail decided city residents didn't deserve regional rail anymore
re-drawing of a 1979 map from https://www.transitmap.net/septa-1980/
I mean, would you rather take a trolley to chestnut hill, or take a dedicated commuter rail line? But yes you are right, the trolley lines were replaced with bus routes.
That said, if you compare the current rail routes against the 1979 map, a lot of the lost service like the Bethlehem and Allentown spurs occurred simultaneously with those cities and towns completely losing their manufacturing bases and jobs; the ridership to support the cost of maintenance wasn't there anymore.
Currently, looking forward, SEPTA has to figure out what to do in 2022 when the whole PA Turnpike revenues disappear - to be fair, I think we should have some kinda local tax that goes to SEPTA in both Philadelphia and surrounding counties to support commuter transportation. Toss it into tires, gasoline, ownership of a car, whatever - that lets SEPTA have a revenue stream aside from ticket sales and relying entirely on Harrisburg to supply , what, 80? 90%? of SEPTA's operating budget.
note: this isn't my idea, its the CONNECT plan from OTIS (http://planphilly.com/articles/2018...sportation-plan)
(also Kenny, possibly feeling which way the winds are blowing, has put 100% priority behind the Streets and Sanitation part of the plan, especially the Streets part to fix potholes. They're trying to fix the whole 'Filthadelphia' thing, but people didn't want to move their cars to allow for street sweeping, so now they want to pay Sanitation guys to use leaf blowers to blow the trash out from under the cars and sweep it up in the middle of the street. I'm all for getting DC 33 guys more jobs and hours, but, uh, the city should have just made people move their loving cars).
2ndary Philadelphia edit: Donuteat what do you think can be done to fix 76 going out to KoP and make it less of the constant shitshow it is everyday? Also are those old CONRAIL lines next to 76 used for freight oil exclusively?
Laphroaig has issued a correction as of 15:45 on Apr 4, 2019
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Apr 4, 2019 15:37
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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Speaking of trains, I can't wait until Franklin gets to the fun of how badly the PRR hosed the city of Philly with their Broad Street Terminal. It was essentially the original PRR station and was stub ended. Unfortunately for the people of Philly, it's tracks were an uncrossable barrier that you had to go around to continue North.
Also it constantly caught fire. So the PRR eventually built 30th street and closed the Broad Street Station.
Philly is also the start of the PRR "Spite Line" or Schuylkill River Branch. Due to how much the PRR hated the Philadelphia and Reading, they decided to try and put the latter out of business by building a rail line paralleling the Reading's main line between Philly and Pottsville. It was expensive, faced countless legal battles as the Reading kept building sidings to block the PRR, and was ultimately unprofitable but it made a hell of a bike path. I think the best story I read about that line was that the Reading blocked the PRR again in Pottsville, so the PRR said gently caress it and just started laying rail on top of the sidewalk without permission from the city.
Its really amazing how infrastructure has determined the City's neighborhoods over time - the Broad Street Station made center city north of the station hard to access due to it being cut off from the rest of downtown, as you mention, and that had a direct impact on the lack of development.
Nowadays, you can visit the building (and get 10% off lunch there if you are serving Jury Duty) - its the Redding Terminal Market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Terminal with the rest of the area now the Philadelphia Convention Center.
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Jun 11, 2019 20:22
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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a new video is like a pie left on a windowsil in a cartoon to me, causing me to float on over and post 'good video' in the thread
PS: Oh the PHA, uhhhh lets just say the agency isn't as bad as the PPA overall, but a number of subcontractors have been proven in court to be literally stealing everything not nailed down, and in one notable case, stealing things nailed down, traveling to a new site, 'installing' the stolen items / reporting that they nailed down the things they stole, but in actuality they knew a guy who was on the take who 'inspected' the work, removing the items fraudulently recorded as being nailed down, billing the PHA for the work and materials, and then using the stolen items in their own renovation projects, and only got caught because a lot of the materials they billed the city for, the city had already paid for (for the 2nd job), triggering an inquiry into why the city had 2 invoices for the same set of copper wiring / plumbing / etc.
Most of the thieves though just show up to a site, sit around for 4 hours, do a repair of piece of work that only requires 1/8th of the materials, bill the city for the entire spool/pallet of materials, and then use the rest of the stuff for their own side jobs.
The Streets Dept. of Philadelphia caught on to city workers using city tools and materials from their storerooms to do work on the side, which was cleverly solved by the warehouse supervisor using the high tech innovation of a 'sign out / sign in' sheet for the tools/materials and locking them up in a closet with a key otherwise.
Laphroaig has issued a correction as of 00:21 on Aug 6, 2019
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Aug 6, 2019 00:12
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Apr 27, 2024 20:48
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- Laphroaig
- Feb 6, 2004
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Drinking Smoke
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Dinosaur Gum
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Budd train video good.
North korea isn’t a communist country, or particularly socialist, donoteat keeps drifting into hanging out with the Mao crowd online these days and I think it’s slowly becoming unironic because he keeps saying stupid poo poo over and over and over again. A critique of capitalism doesn’t mean every video needs to be embracing whatever flavor of asian fascist autocracy is building high speed rail this week.
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Oct 7, 2019 15:33
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Oct 4, 2018 16:56
