Nov. 18, 1883: Railroad Time Goes Coast to Coast

[MordEth]

I saw the train image in this and immediately thought of Big Six, but I think that this is another article that may appeal to more of the members here, especially the information about “standardizing time”.

Nov. 18, 1883: Railroad Time Goes Coast to Coast
By Randy Alfred, 7 hours ago

An 1885 Pacific time-zone construction crew posed with a wood-burning balloon-stack locomotive at the Green River in the Cascades.
Photo: Corbis

1883: U.S. and Canadian railways adopt five standardized time zones to replace the multiplicity of local times in communities across the continent. Everyone would soon be operating on “railroad time.”

Noon on a well-made, properly paced sundial is whenever the sun is highest right there. The advent of mechanical timekeeping in the Middle Ages didn't change that. Noon in your town was whenever the sun was highest right there. If that meant that noon in a town a hundred miles away might be a few minutes ahead or behind your local noon, big deal. You couldn't get there fast enough for it to matter.

The railroad changed that, starting in the early 19th century. The horse had been the fastest way to move people and goods from one place to another since the species was domesticated, as early as 4000 B.C. The six-millennium reign ended quickly as networks of rails spread across North America and Europe at mid-century.

But timekeeping was still medieval. Local jewelers synchronized their customers’ watches to local solar noon. In a small town with one jeweler, everyone might use the same time settings. In a large city, the many jewelers’ various observations might diverge by several minutes. Some places achieved citywide synchronization by dropping a time ball on a highly visible tower at noon every day. (It worked better than ringing a bell. You might hear a great bell two or three miles away, but that would be 10 or 15 seconds after it was struck.)

Thousands of municipalities each worked to their local times. The Chicago Tribune, for instance, showed 27 local times in Michigan, 38 in Wisconsin, 27 in Illinois and 23 in Indiana.

Railroad timetables used about a hundred different standards. A single railroad that traveled east to west would use multiple noons: The Union Pacific, for example, had six different settings in what are today the Central and Mountain zones. The Union Station that served multiple railroads in a big city might have five or six different clocks, one for each railroad in the station, each running on is own time.

As new technology let railroad trains go even faster, the need for a better system was increasingly evident. The multiplicity of local time settings also created complexity and confusion for operators and users of the telegraph (whose lines usually followed the rails) and the newfangled telephone.

England, Scotland and Wales standardized to Greenwich Mean Time on Dec. 6, 1848, after two decades of urging by Sir John Herschel. In the United States, Charles F. Dowd, principal of Temple Grove Ladies’ Seminary at Saratoga Springs, New York, pushed the case in 1869 for four time zones, each the width of 15 degrees of longitude. Professor Benjamin Pierce of Harvard picked up the cudgels in the 1870s.

The cause was also championed by William F. Allen, secretary of the General Time Convention, the group the railways had formed to coordinate their schedules. (That group evolved into Association of American Railroads.)

The railroads finally agreed to General Time Convention on Oct. 11, 1883. They adopted five time zones: Intercolonial Time (now known as Atlantic Time in eastern Canada) and the Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones. The U.S. zones were based on solar noon at 75, 90, 105 and 120 degrees west of Greenwich.

When the new system took effect at noon on Nov. 18, conductors all over the United States and Canada resynchronized their watches from their individual railroads' times to the new standard times. Some folks objected, thinking they were being robbed of minutes, just as people felt robbed of days when the calendar shifted from Julian to Gregorian in previous centuries.

But businesses followed the lead of the railroads, and people showed up for work when employers said they needed to, and customers visited stores when shopkeepers said they were open. And people arrived at the railroad station to catch trains that ran on the same time settings as the watches in their pockets and the clocks on the sidewalks.

So convenient was the system of time zones that it thrived entirely on the say-so of the railroads for 35 years. Congress did not enact Standard Time until March 19, 1918, when it also initiated Daylight Saving Time as an efficiency measure during World War I.

Source: FREMO (Friendship Association of European Model Railroaders)

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• Gallery: Editor's Picks for the Wired.com Transportation Photo Contest

(Quoted from Wired.)

I’ll be posting the first gallery (which is appropriate for this board, in my opinion) immediately below this post as a reply).

[MordEth]

Golden Age of Trains in Black and White
By Keith Axline, in Wired’s Culture : Art

Photographer Jim Shaughnessy first turned his lens on trains in 1946 at age 13. Over the following 20 years, he chased trains around New England and Canada, documenting the fall of steam engines and the rise of diesel locomotives — all in gorgeous black and white.

Shaughnessy approaches the machines with a documentary eye, with art as a welcome byproduct. His extensive body of work includes some of the most important historical photographs of locomotives from the era.

Still an avid train photographer, Shaughnessy lives in his hometown of Troy, New York, a formerly bustling railroad hub that shrank as railway use dwindled. Wired.com talked with him about his photography and his fascination with trains. Click through the gallery to read the interview and see selections from Shaughnessy's upcoming book, The Call of Trains, to be released Nov. 3.

Above: Canadian National Spadina Avenue engine-servicing facility in Toronto, Ontario, 1957

“This is an arty picture which I normally wouldn’t have taken,” Shaughnessy said. “But I had taken every other possible angle so I thought this would be good. And it turns out it really fills the bill for people who like arty photos.

“And the more I look at it, the more I like it. It's just a big industrial-type scene and the fact that it's backlit only increases the drama and enhances its dirty effect.

“A lot of the pictures we used in the book have never been printed by me before for any purpose. As it turns out, I wish I had taken double the pictures I did take, because you can't go back now.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Nickel Plate freight train and 2-8-4, Dunkirk, New York, 1957

Wired.com: How did you first get started with train photography?

Shaughnessy: “It’s one of those things that gradually starts and builds on itself. I can’t identify the exact time I got knocked off the horse by the lightning bolt. I attribute it basically to the fact that my father was a stationary engineer, and he operated a boiler plant and it had engines in it.

“And an uncle who worked for the railroad at one time as a valve shutter for the D&H. When he moved on to another job, periodically, I would go along with him on a day trip. Conversation would evolve around the railroad, and we would even go to some location or meet people who worked on the railroad.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Wabash F7A No. 1160 and CN 2-8-2 No. 3431, Fort Erie, Ontario, 1956

“When you went to an engine terminal in the old days, there was a lot of activity,” Shaughnessy said. “They would bring locomotives in and service them and put water and coal and fuel in them. They’d move them here and there waiting to depart when the next outbound crew came in. It was like a stage set that was constantly changing.

“This is a 4x5 [inch] camera on a tripod. I’d line it up the way I wanted and open the shutter manually and then walk around to the left and fire a No. 25 bulb from the handheld flash gun. Then I’d do the same thing on the diesel locomotive in the distance. Then walk back over and close the shutter.

“You have to be careful of ambient light because with the shutter open it could bleed in and overwhelm the view. Absolute darkness is the best. Sometimes, if it was too big of an area or there was too much light, I’d have a friend open and close the shutter for me.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Derailment of the Rutland Railroad’s Mount Royal passenger train, Arlington, Vermont, 1949

“This was a passenger train that ran from New York to Troy and up through Vermont to Montreal overnight,” Shaughnessy said. “It was in the springtime and the rains softened up the track bed. When they went over it, it slumped and they went off the track. People were shaken up a little bit but there were no fatalities.

“I heard about it and went up. This is about an hour from my home. In those days it wasn’t a big deal; now they have all kinds of state troopers and blocked-off areas.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Troy Union Railroad crossing guard John Moriarity and New York Central switch engine during snowstorm, Troy, New York, March 1955

“This is in Troy. I went down with my father in his pickup truck, because I thought it would be interesting to take some pictures under those types of conditions,” Shaughnessy said. “This happens repeatedly, but most people aren’t out there to photograph it, because they’re in their warm house.

“This is a crossing guard at the rail station. With the flash off the camera it doesn't blind you. With a light on the camera in a snowstorm, all you get is a bunch of lit flakes in front of you. In a storm like that, there’s also a lot of ambient light.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Delaware & Hudson Baldwin-built Shark freight locomotive No. 1216 in paint booth at Colonie shops, Watervliet, New York, 1974

“The president of the Delaware & Hudson railroad was a history buff and closet rail fan,” Shaughnessy said. “These were some of the first diesel locomotives that were produced by the [ur=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_Locomotive_Works]Baldwin company in Philadelphia[/url] when railroads were transitioning from steam. There were only a few of them left at the time. He bought these for scrap value and used them on some excursion trains because of their historic value.

“This is a picture of the crew in the shop painting them into the Delaware & Hudson colors. There’s a case of where I knew these guys, and I had them hold a pose while I took the photo.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

New York Central 4-6-0 No. 1199, St. Thomas, Ontario, 1956

“The New York Central Railroad in Southern Ontario had an isolated branch that would only allow very lightweight locomotives on it,” Shaughnessy said. “At the time, they didn’t have any diesels, and there wasn’t enough business on it to get one.

“So they had these two old locomotives, one of which I’m standing on. A friend of mine and I were there for an hour or two, and they were moving them around and servicing them. This just appealed to me as a different angle.

“In the center is what they call a turntable. All the tracks lead up to it, and there’s one track on it and they align to whichever one they need to move a piece of equipment off. Then they turn it and head it toward ... the roundhouse, for example on the left to go into the stall.

“Diesels don't usually have this because they aren’t subject to direction as much, they can go in either direction. Steam engines run best forward. They’re not around so much anymore, because they take up a lot of space and railroads are very conscious of any area that can be taxed by the municipality.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Canadian Pacific Jubilee-type 4-4-4, No. 2927, Sutton, Quebec, 1955

“This was a locomotive that was used on the passenger-commuter train from Montreal to a small community about 60 miles east,” Shaughnessy said. “It ended there, and it’s just sitting there overnight for the return trip in the morning.

“The reproduction in this book is really amazing, because there’s a lot of detail in most of these photographs that I never really achieved in my printing process with chemicals. By dodging you can do a certain amount, but they were able to process these digitally for the printing process, and they got a tremendous amount of detail out of them.

“This is a good example, because you can see the texture very nicely in the snow even in the more shadowy areas near the bottom and right-hand side of the picture.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Baltimore & Ohio 2-8-8-4, near Painesville, Ohio, 1955

Wired.com: Have the glory days of trains passed?

Shaughnessy: “It depends on your viewpoint and frame of reference, because we talk about that at different times with different people. I think that there’s even a growing fascination now, at least in terms of its intensity, because the people who are interested in trains are very avid and all they know is diesels. This does go to underscore that there is some hidden fascination in the railroad. I haven’t been able to identify exactly what it is.

“Certainly in the old days it was romanticized in poems and literature. The local depot was the coffeehouse of its day, where people would gather, and they’d meet people coming in and see people off. It’s where the mail arrived and the newspapers and the telegraph office, and that was their connection to the outside world. It was kind of like an internet coffeehouse as we know it today.

“The 20 years after World War II were the best for trains in my opinion, because first of all there were steam locomotives still around but they began to be phased out by 1960. The end of the 1940s is when the diesels started to come in. There were so many steam engines on so many railroads that they prevailed for quite a while, and there was a transition period that I was able to witness.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Roundhouse laborer replenishing sand supply on Boston & Maine GP9 No. 1726, Mechanicville, New York, 1958

“This guy is putting sand into the locomotive,” Shaughnessy said. “With trains you have a steel wheel on a steel rail and you’d think, ‘Well how do they get traction on that?’ The traction is developed because the locomotive is so heavy relative to the amount of space that actually touches the rail. There’s great pressure on it, and the friction level allows it not to slip.

“But there still are instances, like with a wet rail or when the load isn’t heavy enough, where they put sand under the wheel. It’s done by air pressure and they open a little valve to blow sand under. So, he’s filling the sand reservoir.

“It seems sensible to me to get some people in the picture. If nothing else it gives it scale and tends to give a little life or emotion to an otherwise still picture. When you look at it you visualize that guy moving about.

“I like a human interest, and there’s actually quite a bit of it in this book. It shows the people who work the railroad as well, because it doesn’t run by itself.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Pennsylvania Railroad freight train and operator handing up orders, Leolyn, Pennsylvania, 1957

“Railroad workers run the gamut. There’s cordial people, and there’s grumpy people. And there’s people who take pride in what they do, and there’s people where it’s just a job and they can’t wait to get home.

“It’s a hard job by virtue of it being so spread out. A lot of railroad men ended up being bachelors, because they were never home long enough to establish a family or maintain one.

“Even operators and station agents would be moved around the system periodically as the need arose. Engineers, conductors and brakemen were usually gone at least overnight half the time. They’d have to go from point A to point B and then take a rest at point B before returning to point A.

“The nature of the railroad is kind of like the Army with its operations geographically spread out, so in order to staff it, people have to move.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

Shaughnessy’s darkroom, circa 1949

Wired.com How has your shooting process changed over the years?

Shaughnessy: “I haven’t gone completely digital yet. I use a digital camera for news photos and things like that where time is a factor. I started out in black and white because at the time, in 1955, even earlier, the color film was there, but it turned out not to be good and I didn’t use any of that. Kodachrome was ASA speed 10, so it was really quite limiting, especially when you’re talking about action photography. To get the shutter speed up to stop, you were hurting with the exposure.

“Also, at the time, any magazines or books or anything like that weren't using color. So in order to have this material see the light of day and be used, I chose black and white. As time went on, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I started trying to do both. I took color with a 35mm camera, although I did use some 120 2¼ x 2¼ transparencies in my Rolleiflex. Then it was a case of you can't do either of them right. You try and take a picture of a moving object, and you take one too soon and one too late. So I gave that up.

“But then I gradually, probably out of laziness, moved mostly to color. I haven't taken any black-and-white for a few years. Just because of the convenience of sending it out to be processed and that most publications started using color. In my opinion, black and white is fine but I don’t think you can beat color. It’s what you really see.”

Photo: Jim Shaughnessy

(Quoted from Wired.)