The History of the American Railroad with Albert Churella

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a global leader

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in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of
the American Museum of Science and

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Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents
world-renowned authors, scientists,

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historians, policymakers, and everyone
in between, sharing their insights

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on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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Thanks to a generous grant from the
Institute for Museum and Library

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Services, or IMLS, we’re creating an
AMSEcast series focused on 250 years

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of American innovation in honor of our
nation’s upcoming semi-quincentennial.

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To help us do that, we’re joined in
this episode by Dr. Albert Churella.

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With his MA and PhD from the Ohio
State University, Albert is a professor

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at Kennesaw State University, where
his research focus has been on

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transportation history and policy,
with an emphasis on the topic we’re

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going to discuss today: railroads.

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So, Albert, thanks so much
for joining us on AMSEcast.

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Well, thank you, Alan.

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It’s great to talk to you today.

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I love railroads.

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I remember growing up on a farm
in Kentucky, but going into town,

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and it was always a big deal
when the train went through town.

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So I’m, from an early age, the kid who
would wait for the caboose to go by, and

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I was always very excited [laugh] by it.

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But now, as I’ve learned more about the
importance of railroads in our economy

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today and certainly in our history and
the technological advances behind them,

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I’m more and more enthralled with them.

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You know, I know that I put this in my
questions to you, and I understand it’s

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a difficult question, but when was the
first train in operation in the US?

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Or do we know generally when
the first train was in operation

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in the US, and where was that?

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I suppose the answer to that
question depends on how you

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define the term railroad.

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At its most basic level, a railroad
is simply a wheeled vehicle

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operating on a fixed guideway, and
we have examples of that in Europe

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going back to the 16th century.

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And here in North America, even in
the very late colonial period, there

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were a few examples of, kind of,
what we would call today tramways

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propelled by humans or by horses.

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And certainly by the very, very late-18th
century, there were several examples

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of tramways in the new United States.

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But really, I think it’s the year 1825
that’s really critically important

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because that was when the Stockton
and Darlington railway opened in Great

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Britain, almost exactly 200 years
ago, actually, September of 1825.

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And the Stockton and Darlington
pioneered a lot of the elements of

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what we would call a true railway.

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It had a corporate charter, it carried
freight and passengers, it had steam

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locomotives for power rather than
human beings or horses, it operated

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under a set of rules and timetables.

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And the Stockton and Darlington
attracted worldwide attention,

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particularly in the United States, an
area where there were vast distances

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that were, to say the least, badly
served by overland transportation.

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And there was an ongoing debate
between proponents of canals, the kind

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of proven technology, and those who
supported the brand new and largely

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untested technology of railroads.

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And so, people went from the United States
to Great Britain and to the continent

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of Europe to examine what people there
were doing and to bring back ideas.

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So, as far as the first, I suppose,
proper railroad in the United States,

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it’s a contested claim, but it might
be the Granite Railway in Quincy,

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Massachusetts, which opened in 1826, just
a year after the Stockton and Darlington.

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And it attracted a lot of attention, in
part because it was so close to Boston,

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and people could get out there and see
it, and in part because it pioneered a lot

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of the elements of a true railway, like
track switches and so on, even though it

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didn’t initially use steam locomotives.

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Same year—1826—chartered, but took
a while to get built, the Mohawk and

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Hudson Railroad, which was short.

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It later became part of
the New York Central.

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But designed to allow passengers
to quickly bypass the very long and

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time-consuming set of locks leading
from the Hudson River up to the, kind

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of, eastern end of the Erie Canal.

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And it was the first railroad
designed from the beginning to

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use steam locomotives as power.

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And after that, there were a whole series
of railroads that opened up, kind of in

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the anthracite country of northeastern
Pennsylvania, taking coal from the mines,

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often by gravity, using gravity to kind
of propel the loaded coal wagons down

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to the nearest canal and then using,
sometimes horses, but increasingly

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locomotives, to drag the empty coal
cars back up to the mines Again.

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The Delaware and Hudson
Canal Company had a railroad.

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It wasn’t the Delaware
and Hudson Railroad.

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It was the Delaware and Hudson
Canal Company that used a railroad.

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And it employed, very briefly,
the Stourbridge Lion, which was

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really the first steam locomotive
to operate in the United States.

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And then things are
happening very quickly.

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I mean, the Camden and Amboy begins
operating in New Jersey in 1832,

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connecting the north and south rivers,
that is the Hudson in New York Bay, with

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the Delaware River near Philadelphia.

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In 1829, the South Carolina
Canal and Railroad Company

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established—and again, note the name.

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They’re hedging their bets here.

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So, they could build a railroad, they
could build a canal, they’re going to

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try to see which one works the best.

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And by 1833 it was in full operation.

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At 133 miles, it was the longest
railroad in the world at that time.

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So, even though the British kind of
invent the modern railway, very quickly,

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Americans adopt it as their own and
sort of go past, in some respects,

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what the British were able to do.

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They operated the Best Friend of
Charleston, which memorably was the

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first steam locomotive to blow itself
to pieces in the United States.

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And by the middle of the 1830s—I
mean, very quickly—it was clear

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that railroads, not canals, were the
transportation wave of the future.

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What about the locomotive
itself, the steam locomotive?

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Is that something that we adapted
or took wholesale from the Brits?

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I think adapted is a much better
term than adopted wholesale.

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There certainly is a process that
historians of technology call technology

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transfer, that is taking elements of
a technology from one place, in this

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case, Great Britain, and bringing it to
another place like the United States.

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But there’s a big difference.

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And almost always when there’s
technology transfer, it’s not seamless.

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It’s not like picking up something in
one place and just plopping it down

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somewhere else and turning it on and
letting it go because every environment

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is different in terms of geography,
population characteristics, government

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regulations, financial instruments,
all those kind of things, and that

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was certainly true with locomotives.

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In Britain, there’s a pretty high
population density, and there are a

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lot of, kind of, densely populated
areas that are already connected

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by an extensive canal network.

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And so, when railways are laid over
top of that existing canal network,

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they tend to be built to a very
high standard: low grades, broad

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curves, tunnels, stone viaducts.

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I mean, they’re built to
last from the very beginning.

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Double tracks, typically, to
handle the expected freight.

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And they cover relatively short distances.

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I mean, if you lay a map of, say,
the British Midlands over the

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United States, you see how small
of an area that is compared to what

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people in the US were dealing with.

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In the United States, there’s a
shortage of labor, especially skilled

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labor, like masons and tunnel workers
and so on, and a shortage of capital.

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Railroads are serving very sparsely
populated areas, in some cases,

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what Americans call the wilderness.

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Of course, it wasn’t a wilderness.

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It was inhabited by indigenous
people, and so on, but they

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see it, at the time, that way.

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There’s a push to get things
up and running very quickly and

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very inexpensively, and what
that means is build it cheap

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and then fix the problems later.

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So, initial American railroad lines
are often single track, they have

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sharp curves, steep grades, they
go over the mountains instead of

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through them, they have wooden
trestles instead of stone viaducts.

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I mean, there are exceptions, of
course, but that was fairly typical.

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And then the thought was, once they
begin making money and once they attract

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settlement and business, then you go
back and upgrade and fix the problems.

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And so, that right there meant that
Americans could not simply use the

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same locomotives that the British used.

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They tried.

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The Stourbridge Lion that operated on
the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company’s

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railroad, widely celebrated as the first
steam locomotive to operate in the US.

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It ran basically once, and was then
proven to be too heavy for the track.

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It would have been fine in Great
Britain, but it simply would not

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have worked in the American context.

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The Camden and Amboy in New Jersey
had better success with the John Bull,

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which, needless to say, was a British
import, like the Stourbridge line.

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I mean, the name says it all.

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It arrived disassembled, packed in crates
with neither blueprints nor instructions.

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And the Camden and Amboy’s mechanic, Isaac
Dripps, who had, I should point out, never

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seen a steam locomotive before, Had only
a conceptual idea of how it’s supposed to

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work, you know, he’s unpacking all these
crates and looking at all these parts.

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He put the thing together.

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It worked.

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It worked, actually, fairly well,
but he soon concluded that the John

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Bull needed modifications to make
it suitable for American conditions.

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So, it’s a tender to carry fuel and water,
a pilot, which we often call a cowcatcher

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on the front of the locomotive to kind
of knock obstructions off the track.

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And you know, again, these are
unfenced right-of-ways, so the number

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of derailments caused by collisions
with cows in the early days is

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really quite astonishingly high.

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A pony truck or pilot truck to guide
the locomotive through sharp curves.

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And very soon, the John Bull and
other locomotives began taking on

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a distinctively American shape.

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And in the 1830s, ’40s, ’50s, I mean
Americans at that time, I think were a

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generation of tinkerers, experimenters,
people who figured things out kind of

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in an ad hoc way, by just, like, putting
pieces and parts together and seeing

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what worked and seeing what didn’t.

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And so, master mechanics at the steam
locomotive builders and also in railroad

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shops, you know, they were overcoming
problems—what historians of technology

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call reverse salience, that is, an
impediment to the efficient use of the

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technology—and they were adding parts and
deleting parts and changing things around.

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And by the 1850s and well before
the Civil War, there is a distinctly

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American style of locomotive.

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In fact, it’s called the
American locomotive, the 4-4-0.

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So, that is a pilot truck
with four wheels, two axles.

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There are four driving wheels on two
axles, very rugged, very dependable,

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sprung, which means that it could
accommodate undulations in the track,

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suitable for freight or passenger service,
and it really became a sort of kind of

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dominant design in the United States.

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And over the decades that followed,
especially after the Civil War, American

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locomotives grew much bigger and more
powerful than their British counterparts.

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You know, one problem the British
had was very restrictive clearances.

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So, tracks were spaced closely
together, the tunnels, the bridges,

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the profile was pretty small, and so
American locomotives were massive.

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They became huge.

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In fact, by the 20th century, the
Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive

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had a fire box for burning coal that
was roughly the size of a two car

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garage in a suburban home today.

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I mean, these are gigantic locomotives,
necessary to handle heavy freight

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trains and to cope with everything and
the conditions that didn’t exist in

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Great Britain, like the crossing of the
Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, the Appalachians,

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huge snow drifts, the brutally hot
temperatures of the Southwest, you

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know, all these kinds of things.

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And I’ll finish here by saying, in
1890, when there’s a rivalry, kind

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of a friendly rivalry, between the
Americans and the British in terms

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of who had the, you know, the best
locomotive design, in 1890 the editor of

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a railroad trade journal in the United
States said that, and I quote, “Some

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of our English readers do not seem to
appreciate the capacity of our locomotives

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on hauling heavy trains,” end quote.

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And he criticized British railroaders,
who—again quoting—“Whose opinions are

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not based on American experience or
conditions anything like those which

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obtain here.” So, this is a pretty clear
realization that the United States is,

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in a lot of respects, very different and
the locomotive technology that developed

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initially in Great Britain has been
reimagined and reconceptualized and

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transformed into something extraordinarily
new and different in the United States.

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All I could think, Albert, when you
talked about Mr. Dripps and opening

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that locomotive and trying to put it
together without blueprints, is my

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experience always is, I would have
several pieces left over at the end.

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I don’t know if he did or not,
[laugh] but that would be beyond

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me, obviously, to try that.

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If he did have parts left over,
he didn’t tell anybody about it.

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He was actually a steamboat mechanic
originally, and he was working, you

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know, very, very close to both New
York Bay and into the Delaware River.

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And it’s possible a few things wound up
in the river by the time it was done.

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[laugh]

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.
But it worked.

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I mean, it worked in the end.

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It worked.

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That’s all that mattered.

225
00:14:12,890 --> 00:14:13,240
That’s right.

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00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:17,239
And am I correct, I think I read that
two American innovations that were added

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00:14:17,270 --> 00:14:19,599
were the coupler and the air brake.

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00:14:19,790 --> 00:14:20,769
Is that correct?

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00:14:21,730 --> 00:14:22,789
Absolutely, yes.

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00:14:22,820 --> 00:14:28,400
And the automatic coupler, the knuckle
coupler, as it’s often called, and the

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00:14:28,400 --> 00:14:34,340
air brake rank among the most important
innovations and safety innovations,

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00:14:34,969 --> 00:14:39,800
not just in the history of American
railroads, but in American history, or,

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I guess, even world history in general,
if you calculate them on the basis of the

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00:14:44,710 --> 00:14:49,750
number of lives saved and the number of
serious injuries that have been prevented.

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You got to remember
that in the 1850s, ’60s,

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’70s, even into the 1880s and
’90s, American railroads were

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extraordinarily dangerous places to work.

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Casualty rates were far higher
than they were for soldiers

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00:15:04,290 --> 00:15:05,900
in combat in the Civil War.

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00:15:06,080 --> 00:15:11,230
And what that meant was that if somebody
began working for the railroad in the late

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teens, and they can anticipate maybe a
50 year—40 or 50 year—career, on average,

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00:15:17,910 --> 00:15:23,025
they stood a one in four chance of
being killed on the job, and had a 50/50

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00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:25,310
chance of suffering a serious injury.

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00:15:25,620 --> 00:15:29,589
Now, those figures are misleading
because that’s at a given time.

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Obviously, over 50 years, safety
conditions improved, so the dangers that

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00:15:34,940 --> 00:15:39,580
people faced at age 18 were not the same
ones they faced when they were in their

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00:15:39,580 --> 00:15:45,720
50s or even into their 60s, but you get
a sense of how dangerous railroads were.

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00:15:46,040 --> 00:15:50,920
And most of the people who were
injured or killed had problems in

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00:15:50,920 --> 00:15:53,119
what are often called small accidents.

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00:15:53,660 --> 00:15:55,949
They died one or two at a time.

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They fell off the train, they were crushed
between cars, they slipped and bashed

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00:16:01,770 --> 00:16:05,690
their head open, the boiler blew up,
they were scalded to death by the steam.

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00:16:06,120 --> 00:16:11,600
In fact, that was even a common
line in obituaries: “Enginemen

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00:16:11,609 --> 00:16:15,830
so-and-so scalded to death by the
steam,” which must be a particularly

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00:16:15,830 --> 00:16:20,380
horrible way to die, especially
given that it was not instantaneous.

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00:16:20,380 --> 00:16:23,820
People could linger in agony
for even several days before

257
00:16:23,820 --> 00:16:25,169
they succumb to their injuries.

258
00:16:25,530 --> 00:16:30,719
And there was pretty much an equal number
of casualties—deaths and injuries—to

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00:16:30,770 --> 00:16:37,060
non-railroaders, to passengers who were
killed getting on and off trains, and

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00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:41,040
to a large group of what railroaders
variously referred to as trespassers,

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00:16:41,050 --> 00:16:46,429
tramps, hobos, ne’er-do-wells, whatever,
you know, people who were on the

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00:16:46,430 --> 00:16:50,530
railroad right-of-away or hitching
rides on trains and died as a result.

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00:16:50,730 --> 00:16:56,849
Yet the news media tended to focus on big
disasters, horrible crashes of passenger

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00:16:56,849 --> 00:16:58,680
trains that killed 40 or 50 people.

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00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:00,269
And that’s true today.

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I mean, I’ve talked to people who say,
“I’m not going to fly. It’s too dangerous.

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00:17:04,670 --> 00:17:08,740
I saw what they showed on the TV about
that plane crash and everybody died.

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00:17:09,099 --> 00:17:12,990
I’m going to drive.” Ignoring the
fact that, statistically, automobile

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00:17:12,990 --> 00:17:15,990
travel is vastly, vastly more
dangerous than commercial aviation.

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00:17:17,710 --> 00:17:21,460
And so, something similar was going
on in the, kind of, mid to late-1800s,

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00:17:22,360 --> 00:17:28,709
and railroaders then—and now—are
sensitive to public relations, right?

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00:17:28,710 --> 00:17:33,970
I mean, nobody wants to be the lead
story in a newspaper with, “New York

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00:17:33,970 --> 00:17:38,980
Central train goes through bridge;
dozens die.” I mean, this is… not good.

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So, they responded by reassuring
passengers that passenger train travel

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was safe because they were going to
put air brakes and automatic couplers

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00:17:52,500 --> 00:17:53,869
onto their passenger equipment.

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Why passenger equipment?

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00:17:55,700 --> 00:17:57,090
Well, because passenger
consists—that is collections of

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00:17:57,090 --> 00:18:01,929
cars—they kind of stayed together.

280
00:18:02,140 --> 00:18:04,880
They weren’t shuffled around
like freight cars and they

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00:18:04,880 --> 00:18:06,680
typically stayed on one railroad.

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00:18:06,970 --> 00:18:12,560
So, if a railroad bought a passenger
car, paid for it, and bore the expense of

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00:18:12,570 --> 00:18:18,109
adding air brakes and automatic couplers,
then they could be sure that no other

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00:18:18,109 --> 00:18:22,740
railroad was going to, kind of, borrow
that car and use it without paying for it.

285
00:18:23,450 --> 00:18:27,899
So, the question then became,
okay, what kind of brakes?

286
00:18:27,950 --> 00:18:29,290
What kind of couplers?

287
00:18:30,050 --> 00:18:33,120
And as you might expect, there
were numerous more or less

288
00:18:33,120 --> 00:18:34,970
simultaneous innovations.

289
00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:40,570
There were lots of competing designs
for brake systems, air brakes,

290
00:18:40,590 --> 00:18:45,530
vacuum brakes, and for different
kinds of automatic coupling systems.

291
00:18:46,250 --> 00:18:50,730
Now, the two that we’re familiar
with—because they often say history

292
00:18:51,280 --> 00:18:54,469
is written by the winners—the two that
we’re familiar with because they won

293
00:18:54,470 --> 00:18:58,780
out in the end are the air brake system
that George Westinghouse patented

294
00:18:58,780 --> 00:19:05,035
in 1869 and the knuckle coupler, or
it’s often called the Janney coupler,

295
00:19:05,230 --> 00:19:08,360
that Eli Janney patented in 1873.

296
00:19:08,949 --> 00:19:11,360
So again, there were lots and
lots of other choices here.

297
00:19:11,590 --> 00:19:14,620
Now, there are a couple of
problems that face the railroads.

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00:19:14,630 --> 00:19:16,940
I mean, passenger equipment,
that’s pretty straightforward.

299
00:19:17,150 --> 00:19:21,650
You put all this stuff on, you tell your
passengers, “Don’t worry, you’re not

300
00:19:21,650 --> 00:19:26,469
going to die because we’re committed to
your safety.” Now, freight equipment is

301
00:19:26,469 --> 00:19:32,440
more difficult because, quite frankly,
the traveling public, they’re sad if

302
00:19:32,440 --> 00:19:36,830
a railroad worker dies in the job,
but it’s not going to keep them from

303
00:19:36,890 --> 00:19:41,080
traveling by train or boycotting the
railroad, so there’s less of an incentive.

304
00:19:41,559 --> 00:19:43,880
And the scale of the problem is bigger.

305
00:19:44,780 --> 00:19:49,870
There are many, many times more freight
cars than there are passenger cars,

306
00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:55,910
and what’s worse, from the railroads
perspective, is that they travel all over

307
00:19:55,910 --> 00:20:00,940
the country because there are hundreds of
different independent railroad companies.

308
00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:03,549
And so, executives on one
railroad are going to say,

309
00:20:03,549 --> 00:20:04,610
“Look, let me get this straight.

310
00:20:05,309 --> 00:20:09,379
We’re going to spend a huge amount of
money equipping all of our freight cars

311
00:20:09,940 --> 00:20:14,240
with air brakes and automatic couplers,
and then we’re going to interchange those

312
00:20:14,250 --> 00:20:20,020
cars with some other railroad, and that
railroad is going to just sort of use

313
00:20:20,020 --> 00:20:21,800
them for a while before they return them.

314
00:20:22,539 --> 00:20:25,320
And they’re going to take advantage
of our capital investment, and

315
00:20:25,320 --> 00:20:26,250
they got no skin in the game.”

316
00:20:26,870 --> 00:20:32,310
And the other problem is,
these are integrated systems.

317
00:20:32,320 --> 00:20:36,409
I mean, as you can imagine, with air
brakes, the whole train, every car on the

318
00:20:36,410 --> 00:20:37,939
train, has to be equipped with air brakes.

319
00:20:38,599 --> 00:20:41,669
If even one car in the middle of
the train doesn’t have an air brake

320
00:20:41,690 --> 00:20:43,750
system, then none of it works.

321
00:20:44,590 --> 00:20:51,179
As a stop gap measure, some railroads
began to assemble trains in freight yards

322
00:20:51,809 --> 00:20:56,690
with the freight cars that had air brakes
on the front close to locomotive, and

323
00:20:56,690 --> 00:21:02,020
those that didn’t have air brakes toward
the back, which of course, took time and

324
00:21:02,020 --> 00:21:06,020
made operations much more inefficient
because railroad workers had to sort

325
00:21:06,020 --> 00:21:09,270
out the air brake cars from the non-air
brake cars and put them in the train.

326
00:21:09,559 --> 00:21:13,610
And then the train goes off, and it
goes down the track, and the engineer

327
00:21:14,070 --> 00:21:18,919
sees an obstruction, some problem,
dump the air, apply the air brakes.

328
00:21:19,290 --> 00:21:20,040
That’s great.

329
00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:24,620
So, the front of the train stops
because of the air brakes, but the

330
00:21:24,620 --> 00:21:26,260
cars in the rear don’t have air brakes.

331
00:21:26,270 --> 00:21:30,330
It takes time for brakemen to
walk over the tops of the cars

332
00:21:30,330 --> 00:21:31,569
and apply the hand brakes.

333
00:21:32,500 --> 00:21:34,150
This is where momentum comes in.

334
00:21:34,910 --> 00:21:39,250
And so, the momentum of those
cars then smash into the cars in

335
00:21:39,250 --> 00:21:42,590
front of them that are already
stopped, and the train derails.

336
00:21:42,960 --> 00:21:46,810
And so ironically, the device
that is designed to make railroads

337
00:21:46,810 --> 00:21:51,019
safer, in the interim, is making
them more dangerous by causing

338
00:21:51,020 --> 00:21:52,949
accidents or making accidents worse.

339
00:21:53,609 --> 00:21:57,139
So, there are all sorts of reasons
why railroads are kind of reluctant

340
00:21:57,630 --> 00:22:00,880
to bear the capital expense of
installing air brakes or couplers.

341
00:22:01,500 --> 00:22:04,360
And so, you might say, well,
where’s the government in all this?

342
00:22:04,630 --> 00:22:09,319
Doesn’t the government have some kind
of responsibility for protecting workers

343
00:22:09,320 --> 00:22:12,129
and passengers by regulating safety?

344
00:22:12,600 --> 00:22:14,169
Well, of course, this is early days.

345
00:22:14,180 --> 00:22:19,640
This is before the government began
to really take on an active role in

346
00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:25,060
policing such things, but there was
government involvement, not so much at

347
00:22:25,060 --> 00:22:26,950
the federal level, but at the state level.

348
00:22:27,570 --> 00:22:32,260
A lot of pressure from passengers, from
railroad workers, from people who just

349
00:22:32,270 --> 00:22:37,610
were kind of horrified at the death
and injury toll, they put pressure

350
00:22:37,610 --> 00:22:42,739
on state legislatures to pass safety
legislation mandating air brakes,

351
00:22:42,799 --> 00:22:44,610
automatic couplers, those kind of things.

352
00:22:45,370 --> 00:22:49,080
Well, that’s great, but here’s the
problem, remember what I said before

353
00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:55,030
about numerous competing systems that
are incompatible with each other.

354
00:22:55,800 --> 00:23:03,740
So, imagine that Ohio mandates one
type of air brake system and one type

355
00:23:03,740 --> 00:23:09,510
of automatic coupler, and Indiana
mandates a completely different type

356
00:23:09,510 --> 00:23:13,030
of air brake system and a completely
different type of automatic coupler.

357
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:13,615
What do you do?

358
00:23:13,660 --> 00:23:17,999
Do you stop your train at the state
line and transfer all the cargo from

359
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:19,950
one set of cars to another set of cars?

360
00:23:20,610 --> 00:23:21,549
That can’t happen.

361
00:23:22,270 --> 00:23:25,660
And when railroad executives realized
this was going on, they were horrified

362
00:23:26,530 --> 00:23:30,010
and they said, “Ah, but there’s the
Commerce Clause the constitution that

363
00:23:30,010 --> 00:23:32,920
gives the federal government the right
to regulate commerce between or among

364
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:35,340
the various states. That’s our salvation.

365
00:23:35,790 --> 00:23:40,490
So, what we need to do is go to the
feds, to go to the national level and

366
00:23:40,490 --> 00:23:46,189
get Congress to adopt national safety
legislation that overrides what the

367
00:23:46,190 --> 00:23:51,190
states are doing.” And so, this is an
interesting thing about the history of

368
00:23:51,460 --> 00:23:56,580
regulation and the history of business
government relations, that oftentimes it

369
00:23:56,580 --> 00:24:03,830
is the company being regulated that asks
Congress to implement regulation, and

370
00:24:03,830 --> 00:24:07,350
in the process, kind of tells Congress
what kind of regulation to implement.

371
00:24:07,610 --> 00:24:10,790
And so, you say, but then,
if that’s the case, why do we

372
00:24:10,790 --> 00:24:12,410
even need Congress to step in?

373
00:24:12,410 --> 00:24:14,929
Why don’t we let the railroads,
you know, do the right thing?

374
00:24:15,190 --> 00:24:19,089
And the answer has to do with what
business historian Thomas McCraw

375
00:24:19,139 --> 00:24:20,790
calls the gun behind the door.

376
00:24:21,130 --> 00:24:26,480
And you don’t have to see the gun
to be afraid of it, to take action

377
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:28,990
to avoid it, and that’s true here.

378
00:24:29,360 --> 00:24:33,040
Railroad executives knew that if they
weren’t proactive, if they didn’t

379
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:37,430
get ahead of the game, if they didn’t
ask Congress to implement national

380
00:24:37,430 --> 00:24:41,840
regulation, then Congress was going to
come down on them like a ton of bricks,

381
00:24:42,330 --> 00:24:45,770
and they would wind up with regulation
that they found utterly unacceptable.

382
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:48,300
So, how does this play out in practice?

383
00:24:48,830 --> 00:24:53,859
Well, the Master Car Builders’
Association and other trade associations

384
00:24:54,129 --> 00:24:57,639
of engineers—I don’t mean locomotive
engineers; I mean, like, mechanical

385
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:00,350
engineers on the railroads—they meet.

386
00:25:00,790 --> 00:25:04,480
So, these are representatives from
different railroads who don’t care about

387
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:08,979
competition between Company A and Company
B. They see this as a technical problem

388
00:25:09,839 --> 00:25:11,590
that they all have to work on together.

389
00:25:12,029 --> 00:25:16,210
And they agree on a set of
standards for the use of air

390
00:25:16,210 --> 00:25:17,490
brakes and automatic couplers.

391
00:25:17,810 --> 00:25:21,379
They happen to pick Westinghouse’s
standard for air brakes.

392
00:25:21,420 --> 00:25:21,860
Why?

393
00:25:22,429 --> 00:25:27,090
Because Westinghouse, very
helpfully, gives them a whole set

394
00:25:27,130 --> 00:25:33,040
of ideas about the best kind of
standardized air brake system.

395
00:25:33,430 --> 00:25:36,580
And the proponents of the Janney
coupler, not quite so much, there

396
00:25:36,580 --> 00:25:40,780
are a number of innovations here, but
they all agree on this uniformity.

397
00:25:41,050 --> 00:25:46,080
They all agree basically to
pledge their railroad companies

398
00:25:46,190 --> 00:25:50,060
to do the right thing, to take on
their share of the responsibility

399
00:25:50,060 --> 00:25:52,409
and install these new systems.

400
00:25:52,750 --> 00:25:56,670
And then they go to Congress,
and they hand Congress what

401
00:25:56,670 --> 00:25:58,419
amounts to the safety legislation.

402
00:25:59,190 --> 00:26:04,519
And the safety legislation is
written in such a way that there is

403
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:09,440
only one air brake system that can
meet the criteria that Congress has

404
00:26:09,450 --> 00:26:12,449
stipulated, which of course is what
the railroads told them to stipulate,

405
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:14,300
and that’s the Westinghouse system.

406
00:26:15,110 --> 00:26:19,599
And the legislation is written
in such a way that only one type

407
00:26:19,670 --> 00:26:23,859
of automatic coupler, the Janney
coupler, can meet the criteria.

408
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:28,970
And so, that’s why those two things
are written into the Safety Appliance

409
00:26:28,970 --> 00:26:34,879
Act of 1893, which mandates those
and other safety improvements.

410
00:26:34,889 --> 00:26:36,350
A very typical process.

411
00:26:37,090 --> 00:26:39,230
There are delays in implementation.

412
00:26:39,750 --> 00:26:43,950
And of course, the railroads are
accused of dragging their feet and

413
00:26:43,950 --> 00:26:46,930
putting profits ahead of human life
and so on, but there are legitimate

414
00:26:46,930 --> 00:26:49,620
reasons why the railroads have to
take time to get this all worked out.

415
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:54,780
But eventually things like air brakes,
automatic couplers become universal.

416
00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:01,470
But it’s a very complicated story, and
it’s a story that, as historians like

417
00:27:01,470 --> 00:27:07,060
Steve Usselman have pointed out—and
Mark Aldrich as well—that tells us

418
00:27:07,100 --> 00:27:13,699
a lot about what factors are at play
when we ask industry and government to

419
00:27:13,700 --> 00:27:16,079
make people’s lives better or safer.

420
00:27:16,350 --> 00:27:22,060
And one of the reasons that railroads
eventually came around to safety

421
00:27:22,060 --> 00:27:25,860
appliances like air brakes and
automatic couplers is they figured

422
00:27:25,860 --> 00:27:32,040
out that with those improvements,
they could operate longer trains,

423
00:27:32,570 --> 00:27:35,429
heavier trains, and faster trains.

424
00:27:36,129 --> 00:27:39,620
That is, they could be more efficient,
more productive, and make more money.

425
00:27:39,980 --> 00:27:45,019
And if, in the process, fewer people
were killed or injured, that was

426
00:27:45,020 --> 00:27:47,709
a very happy ancillary benefit.

427
00:27:47,950 --> 00:27:51,950
And so, I think the lesson we
learn here is that corporate

428
00:27:51,950 --> 00:27:53,389
executives are not monsters.

429
00:27:53,389 --> 00:27:56,530
They don’t want to see their workers
or their customers killed, but they’re

430
00:27:56,530 --> 00:28:03,280
also in business to make a profit—that’s
capitalism—and the best way to ensure that

431
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:09,210
companies do the right thing is to ensure
that doing the right thing and doing

432
00:28:09,210 --> 00:28:11,489
the profitable thing are the same thing.

433
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:13,389
That’s fascinating.

434
00:28:13,410 --> 00:28:17,909
And while we’re on safety, I
wondered also about track signals.

435
00:28:17,910 --> 00:28:20,390
When did those come into use?

436
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,139
And what did they do
before they were around?

437
00:28:23,139 --> 00:28:26,379
How did they manage the traffic
of the trains at that point?

438
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:30,300
Like every other aspect of railroad
technology and railroad operations,

439
00:28:30,300 --> 00:28:35,960
use of signals came about in a kind
of experimental fashion, incremental

440
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:42,459
evolution over time, to cope with
increasingly high traffic levels and

441
00:28:42,660 --> 00:28:44,619
operating environments and so forth.

442
00:28:44,780 --> 00:28:47,239
It’s an issue particularly
in the United States.

443
00:28:47,239 --> 00:28:49,810
I mentioned that there were a lot of
single-track railroads in the United

444
00:28:49,810 --> 00:28:51,169
States, and you see the problem.

445
00:28:51,890 --> 00:28:56,549
Imagine, like, driving down the freeway
at 60 miles an hour, and there’s only

446
00:28:56,550 --> 00:29:01,099
one lane for the traffic going your
direction and the traffic coming at you.

447
00:29:01,799 --> 00:29:02,557
This is a problem.

448
00:29:02,710 --> 00:29:06,200
There’s got to be some way of
regulating that, of keeping traffic

449
00:29:06,210 --> 00:29:10,780
moving, which is certainly important,
but also preventing catastrophe in

450
00:29:10,780 --> 00:29:12,379
the form of a head-on collision.

451
00:29:12,820 --> 00:29:15,240
Or, you know, rear-end collision,
which happened quite a bit

452
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:16,290
on the railroads as well.

453
00:29:16,590 --> 00:29:17,399
Because these are fixed guideways.

454
00:29:17,940 --> 00:29:22,010
I mean, on a highway, even a single-lane
highway, you can swerve around, you

455
00:29:22,010 --> 00:29:26,050
can go onto the median, or whatever
it is, and get around an oncoming car.

456
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,390
But the railroads, they’re
set on their one guideway.

457
00:29:29,390 --> 00:29:35,620
And some of the early railroads, the
single-track lines that operated with

458
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:40,260
horsepower—so you have one Teamster with
a horse and a wagon on the railroad coming

459
00:29:40,510 --> 00:29:44,290
north, and one Teamster with a horse and
wagon coming south, they would simply.

460
00:29:44,390 --> 00:29:48,610
Keep going until they ran into each
other, and then they would discuss.

461
00:29:48,650 --> 00:29:51,580
When I say discuss, I mean yell and
scream at each other and sometimes

462
00:29:51,580 --> 00:29:55,820
hit each other to try to figure
out, you know, who gets to go ahead

463
00:29:55,820 --> 00:29:57,690
and who has to back everything up.

464
00:29:57,870 --> 00:29:59,890
Unhitch the horse, you know, take
it around the other side of the car

465
00:30:00,410 --> 00:30:05,010
and go back to the nearest siding,
or piece of double-track railroad.

466
00:30:05,890 --> 00:30:10,200
That obviously is utterly
unworkable when it comes to steam

467
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:11,649
locomotives and everything else.

468
00:30:11,740 --> 00:30:14,570
So, the question is, you
know, how do you do this?

469
00:30:14,599 --> 00:30:19,350
How do you operate a single-track railroad
with passing sidings for traffic in both

470
00:30:19,350 --> 00:30:22,850
directions, and trains moving at different
speeds, which is also important, too.

471
00:30:23,250 --> 00:30:27,980
So, the most basic system is what’s
called timetable and train order.

472
00:30:28,700 --> 00:30:34,770
So, the railroads print timetables saying
freight train number 17 is going to depart

473
00:30:34,770 --> 00:30:42,250
Poughkeepsie at 8:40 a.m. and arrive at
Albany in 6:17 p.m. or whatever it is, and

474
00:30:42,590 --> 00:30:47,639
to keep to that schedule, keeping in mind
that it’s very complicated because until

475
00:30:47,639 --> 00:30:55,360
the 1880s, many towns had their own unique
time based on when the sun was overhead

476
00:30:55,390 --> 00:30:56,909
at their location, that became noon.

477
00:30:57,430 --> 00:31:02,619
And so, towns that are 30 miles apart,
which they would be in the same time zone,

478
00:31:02,660 --> 00:31:05,519
might have a five minute time difference.

479
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,520
We’ve always had to say, well, the train
arrives at, what, Poughkeepsie time,

480
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:12,720
Albany time, Utica time, which time—
[laugh] it’s not Eastern time, right?

481
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:14,520
It’s the local time.

482
00:31:15,290 --> 00:31:19,900
And then on top of that timetable, there
were train orders that basically said,

483
00:31:20,380 --> 00:31:24,710
you—the engineer and the conductor—have
a right to move your train from this

484
00:31:24,710 --> 00:31:27,909
location to that location, and no farther.

485
00:31:28,359 --> 00:31:32,550
And you have to wait there for the
other train to pass you, either same

486
00:31:32,550 --> 00:31:36,040
direction or the other direction, unless
somebody comes out of the station and

487
00:31:36,050 --> 00:31:39,140
hands you another train order, which
says, well, you know, okay, you can

488
00:31:39,140 --> 00:31:41,710
keep going to this station and so forth.

489
00:31:41,809 --> 00:31:43,910
And those orders were inviolable.

490
00:31:43,940 --> 00:31:46,710
You can’t go beyond what
you’re permitted to do.

491
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:53,820
And that had its limitations too because
many trains waited and waited and waited

492
00:31:53,820 --> 00:31:55,419
to get new orders and things like that.

493
00:31:56,229 --> 00:32:01,690
And so, in 1863 during the Civil War,
when railroads are facing unprecedented

494
00:32:01,700 --> 00:32:07,000
traffic demands, moving soldiers, war
material, and so forth, American railroads

495
00:32:07,109 --> 00:32:11,520
first adopted what’s called the block
system, and it’s called that because

496
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:14,580
they divided the tracks into blocks.

497
00:32:15,410 --> 00:32:21,000
And the key to the block system is
that a block could only hold one train

498
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:24,399
at a time, and that was considered
the kind of fail-safe system.

499
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:28,520
I mean, if only one train is in a block,
they can’t possibly run into each other.

500
00:32:28,650 --> 00:32:32,580
And so, the idea was, a train
cannot enter a block until another

501
00:32:32,580 --> 00:32:34,040
train has exited the block.

502
00:32:34,590 --> 00:32:36,319
So, there’d be telegraphers.

503
00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:39,930
And railroads, I should point out,
were not early adopters of telegraphy.

504
00:32:40,529 --> 00:32:45,450
There’s a story out there that says, the
minute that Samuel F. B. Morse invented

505
00:32:45,460 --> 00:32:47,530
the telegraph, which he did not, right?

506
00:32:47,530 --> 00:32:53,070
He invented parts of the telegraph
system, but he really out lawyered his

507
00:32:53,070 --> 00:32:57,470
opposition and built a wall of patents
and legal restrictions around himself,

508
00:32:57,470 --> 00:33:01,360
and therefore, kind of got the title
of the inventor of the system—but

509
00:33:01,370 --> 00:33:05,790
after people like Morse and [House] and
so on developed telegraphic systems,

510
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:09,320
railroads were very slow to adopt
these because they were unreliable.

511
00:33:09,580 --> 00:33:12,010
They could actually cause more
accidents than they prevented.

512
00:33:12,010 --> 00:33:15,660
But eventually, by the 1860s,
the railroads did begin to

513
00:33:15,969 --> 00:33:18,200
really widely adopt telegraphy.

514
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:24,260
And so, a block operator in a signal
tower at the entrance to a block would

515
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:29,260
display a clear signal saying, “This
block is free. Train can enter.” And

516
00:33:29,260 --> 00:33:34,469
telegraph to his counterpart down at the
next signal tower, “Don’t let anybody

517
00:33:34,469 --> 00:33:38,000
in. Set your signal to red because I
got a train entering the block.” Train

518
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,290
enters the block; exits the block.

519
00:33:40,860 --> 00:33:46,669
The second tower operator then says to the
first tower operator, by telegraph, “Okay,

520
00:33:46,820 --> 00:33:51,280
your guys left, block is clear. What are
you going to do here? Can I let a train

521
00:33:51,290 --> 00:33:56,060
the other direction come by me or are you
going to let a train from your direction

522
00:33:56,610 --> 00:33:58,900
come by you to occupy the block?”

523
00:33:59,130 --> 00:34:00,820
And that’s how they worked things out.

524
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:07,390
Now, that was improved in 1870 but
what’s called the interlocking system

525
00:34:07,740 --> 00:34:12,040
used at junctions where tracks cross
each other and diverge and so forth.

526
00:34:12,119 --> 00:34:16,940
And it’s called that because a tower
operator could throw a series of levers

527
00:34:17,699 --> 00:34:22,780
and that would flip switches and set
signals and so on, that would interlock.

528
00:34:23,210 --> 00:34:29,250
In other words, it would absolutely
prevent any other train except

529
00:34:29,250 --> 00:34:31,690
the one that’s going through
the junction from entering.

530
00:34:32,370 --> 00:34:35,000
The signals will be
automatically set against them.

531
00:34:35,250 --> 00:34:40,870
And laid on top of that was this guy,
William Robinson who’s an Irish immigrant.

532
00:34:41,050 --> 00:34:45,650
An amazing number of American
inventors—and certainly American

533
00:34:45,699 --> 00:34:51,199
entrepreneurs, inventors, and so on—in
the railroads were from other countries

534
00:34:51,199 --> 00:34:53,230
and immigrated to the United States.

535
00:34:53,639 --> 00:34:59,520
So, William Robinson develops the track
circuit in 1872, and basically what

536
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:05,600
it is a system whereby when a wheel
on a locomotive, let’s say, makes a

537
00:35:05,650 --> 00:35:12,080
connection, that is, closes a circuit,
then it sets the signals to red or

538
00:35:12,190 --> 00:35:13,770
to whatever color is being indicated.

539
00:35:14,099 --> 00:35:20,530
So, if a train enters a block, that wheel
closes the circuit, sets the signal to

540
00:35:20,530 --> 00:35:27,720
red and pretty clearly indicates that
the train behind it cannot enter, and

541
00:35:27,720 --> 00:35:32,540
of course, sets the signal down the
line to red, so that a train come in the

542
00:35:32,540 --> 00:35:34,849
opposite direction can’t enter the block.

543
00:35:35,250 --> 00:35:37,740
And there are all kinds
of variations of this.

544
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:43,520
There are distance signals and home
signals, there are absolute stop signals,

545
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,350
and proceed, prepared to stop, and
all kinds of variants of signaling.

546
00:35:47,990 --> 00:35:55,230
And it’s often considered a fail-safe
technology because once that wheel

547
00:35:55,240 --> 00:35:59,270
closes that circuit, the signal goes
to red, and that’s all there is to it.

548
00:35:59,270 --> 00:36:00,510
But of course, it’s not fail safe.

549
00:36:00,550 --> 00:36:07,730
Nothing is fail safe, and it depends
on the ability of the engineer to see,

550
00:36:07,780 --> 00:36:09,820
identify, and respond to the signal.

551
00:36:10,429 --> 00:36:14,890
If the engineer doesn’t pay
attention or can’t see it because

552
00:36:14,890 --> 00:36:19,440
it’s foggy and doesn’t stop,
then, well, there is a failure.

553
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:23,500
And so, railroads then put a lot of
emphasis for engineers to make sure

554
00:36:23,500 --> 00:36:28,389
that they respond, vision tests,
color blindness tests, and so on,

555
00:36:28,650 --> 00:36:32,759
to weed out employees who just
can’t, you know, respond to this.

556
00:36:32,940 --> 00:36:37,839
But there’s always that desire to
eliminate the human element, as if

557
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,680
somehow technology is perfect and
humans are fundamentally flawed.

558
00:36:42,330 --> 00:36:47,979
And that kind of comes back in the
1920s, when the Interstate Commerce

559
00:36:47,980 --> 00:36:52,639
Commission, which is the big federal
agency regulating the railroads, it

560
00:36:52,639 --> 00:36:57,330
requires the railroads to make experiments
with what’s called automatic train stop.

561
00:36:58,180 --> 00:37:04,200
And what that means is that when a train
closes that circuit, sets the signal to

562
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:09,650
red, it also triggers a sensor on the
locomotive, often with a cab signal.

563
00:37:09,650 --> 00:37:12,759
That is, there’s a signal inside the
cab, a little one that replicates the

564
00:37:12,770 --> 00:37:19,089
big line-side signals, and the cab signal
shows red, or whatever the indication is.

565
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:24,010
And if the engineer doesn’t
respond by closing the throttle

566
00:37:24,010 --> 00:37:27,299
and applying the brakes, there’s a
whistle that goes off in the cab.

567
00:37:27,610 --> 00:37:32,420
If the engineer doesn’t respond to that,
then the train stops automatically.

568
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:38,100
That was never widely adopted, in
part because, by the 1920s railroads

569
00:37:38,100 --> 00:37:42,650
were really incredibly safe and
train crews were really very good.

570
00:37:42,710 --> 00:37:47,040
The failure rate, that is, the
failure to distinguish and respond

571
00:37:47,049 --> 00:37:51,490
to a signal was extraordinarily
low, inconsequentially low.

572
00:37:51,740 --> 00:37:54,509
Also in 1920s, railroads
began experimenting with

573
00:37:54,510 --> 00:37:55,980
centralized traffic control.

574
00:37:56,720 --> 00:37:58,570
And the name kind of says it all.

575
00:37:59,300 --> 00:38:04,739
A dispatcher, even hundreds of miles
away from the actual piece of track

576
00:38:04,930 --> 00:38:10,549
carrying the trains, throws switches
on a panel, and that controls the track

577
00:38:10,550 --> 00:38:14,950
switches—that is the movement of the
rails—it controls the signals and so

578
00:38:14,950 --> 00:38:19,409
on, in guiding trains, and it’s a much
more efficient way of moving traffic,

579
00:38:19,870 --> 00:38:21,500
particularly in single-track lines.

580
00:38:21,509 --> 00:38:23,159
It really increases capacity.

581
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:28,830
Now, the latest innovation in recent
times is positive train control.

582
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:32,610
That was sort of in development.

583
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:36,900
It’s really the, kind of, second
generation of automatic train stop.

584
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,190
It’s much more complex than that.

585
00:38:39,250 --> 00:38:44,920
It was under development in the very
late-20th and very early-21st centuries,

586
00:38:45,270 --> 00:38:49,380
and then mandated by Congress, following
that horrific wreck at Chatsworth,

587
00:38:49,390 --> 00:38:56,080
California, in 2008, requiring basically
the entire American railroad network, with

588
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:59,970
some exceptions, to install centralized
traffic control on their lines.

589
00:39:00,059 --> 00:39:05,180
It was supposed to be—at least
members of Congress asserted that—this

590
00:39:05,180 --> 00:39:06,720
was off-the-shelf technology.

591
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:08,290
In fact, it wasn’t.

592
00:39:08,790 --> 00:39:10,820
It was pioneering technology.

593
00:39:10,820 --> 00:39:14,890
It was actually technology that didn’t
exist yet, even to the point where

594
00:39:14,890 --> 00:39:19,830
I’ve heard one railroad executive
tell me that he was doing his part

595
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:23,270
to develop positive train control,
and he got a call from the Pentagon.

596
00:39:24,070 --> 00:39:27,860
And some of the Pentagon said, you know,
w“E hear you’re working on this positive

597
00:39:27,860 --> 00:39:31,690
train control system. We’re really
intrigued by that because there are

598
00:39:31,710 --> 00:39:36,290
elements of it that seem to be better than
what the military is capable of doing.

599
00:39:36,830 --> 00:39:40,019
So, when you figure this
out, tell us how you did it.”

600
00:39:40,019 --> 00:39:42,610
And that gives a kind of an
indication of just how pioneering

601
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:44,879
and innovative this technology was.

602
00:39:45,460 --> 00:39:51,900
And it’s now in place, at a cost of
$10 billion, more or less, and it

603
00:39:51,929 --> 00:39:57,440
does offer the potential to increase
railroad safety, but as always,

604
00:39:57,440 --> 00:39:58,890
the question is, at what cost?

605
00:39:59,720 --> 00:40:03,730
How many accidents are likely to be
prevented by positive train control that

606
00:40:03,730 --> 00:40:05,580
couldn’t be prevented by other means?

607
00:40:05,750 --> 00:40:10,350
If I went into a locomotive today,
if I went in and sat down with

608
00:40:10,359 --> 00:40:12,650
the engineer, how digital is it?

609
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:16,299
Has it gone, like everything
else, and gone high tech digital?

610
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:18,700
Well, yeah, pretty much.

611
00:40:19,240 --> 00:40:22,270
I mean, some people have joked
that a modern diesel locomotive is

612
00:40:22,270 --> 00:40:23,989
a computer with wheels attached.

613
00:40:24,599 --> 00:40:29,460
And I think that’s a bit of an
overstatement, but railroads often has

614
00:40:29,460 --> 00:40:34,660
a reputation as being kind of old-school
technology, big, heavy steel, you

615
00:40:34,660 --> 00:40:36,960
know, all that kind of stuff, clunky.

616
00:40:37,490 --> 00:40:42,259
The reality is that despite that
reputation, railroads have been

617
00:40:42,469 --> 00:40:47,840
pioneers in electronics, digitization,
computers, all that kind of stuff.

618
00:40:47,889 --> 00:40:51,430
They were early adopters of
mainframe computers, in the 1960s,

619
00:40:52,140 --> 00:40:56,049
to keep track of everything, from
billing to car movements and so on.

620
00:40:56,210 --> 00:40:57,980
Some of those innovations didn’t work out.

621
00:40:57,980 --> 00:41:00,190
I mean, that’s true of
any pioneering thing.

622
00:41:00,889 --> 00:41:05,259
They tried, in the ’70s, something
called automatic car identification,

623
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:07,040
which is essentially a barcode.

624
00:41:07,150 --> 00:41:10,330
I mean, scanning freight cars to
keep an eye on where they are,

625
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:13,580
sort of like you’d scan a carton
of milk at the grocery store.

626
00:41:14,460 --> 00:41:17,719
And the problem was, of course,
railroad cars get dirty and the

627
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:22,030
labels get torn off and everything,
and so that didn’t work very well.

628
00:41:23,090 --> 00:41:27,840
But beginning of the 1990s,
things really sort of took off.

629
00:41:27,910 --> 00:41:33,429
Diesel locomotives became high tech with
onboard computer-based microprocessor

630
00:41:34,189 --> 00:41:40,130
monitoring systems regulating everything
from fuel consumption to wheel slip to

631
00:41:40,130 --> 00:41:42,640
speed to air brake pressure and so forth.

632
00:41:43,470 --> 00:41:47,110
Digital technology enabled the use
of what’s called distributed power.

633
00:41:47,110 --> 00:41:50,440
So, if you see a very long freight train
go by at a [grade] crossing or something,

634
00:41:50,849 --> 00:41:55,260
you often see a couple locomotives at
front, maybe one or two in the middle,

635
00:41:55,490 --> 00:42:00,309
with nobody in them, and then a locomotive
or two at the end with nobody in them.

636
00:42:00,309 --> 00:42:06,189
And all those locomotives are
being controlled by one engineer

637
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:07,670
in the cab of the first locomotive.

638
00:42:08,240 --> 00:42:10,419
Now again, that system
took time to develop.

639
00:42:10,420 --> 00:42:13,119
There were experiments
with that many decades ago.

640
00:42:13,230 --> 00:42:19,530
One notable failure involved taking a
train through the Sierra Nevadas with

641
00:42:19,530 --> 00:42:25,670
distributed power using old-fashioned,
kind of, analog radio control, and

642
00:42:25,820 --> 00:42:32,700
when the mid-train locomotive entered a
tunnel, it lost the radio signal, went

643
00:42:32,700 --> 00:42:34,789
into reverse and broke the train in half.

644
00:42:35,459 --> 00:42:37,380
So, you know, these things happen.

645
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:40,950
So, the systems in use today
are obviously vastly, vastly

646
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:42,360
better and more sophisticated.

647
00:42:42,810 --> 00:42:46,870
On the ground, sensors are evaluating
everything from the condition of

648
00:42:46,870 --> 00:42:50,839
the rails and roadbed, looking
for overheated wheels and axles.

649
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:55,549
I can mention in this context, the
very serious wreck in East Palestine

650
00:42:55,550 --> 00:43:00,300
a few years ago with the chemical
tank cars and everything else, caused

651
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:02,420
by an overheated axle or wheel.

652
00:43:02,950 --> 00:43:09,660
And one of the unfortunate things about
that was a defect detector spotted that

653
00:43:10,260 --> 00:43:13,130
and alerted the train crew, and they were
in the process of bringing their train

654
00:43:13,130 --> 00:43:14,899
to a stop when the derailment occurred.

655
00:43:15,330 --> 00:43:19,190
So, if they’d been able to get just
even a few more minutes out of that,

656
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,750
quite possibly there would not have
been such a catastrophic derailment.

657
00:43:22,790 --> 00:43:27,390
So again, the systems aren’t perfect,
but they do actually work very well.

658
00:43:27,889 --> 00:43:32,220
Signaling is more efficient
thanks to digital technology.

659
00:43:32,750 --> 00:43:37,910
I mentioned positive train control and
so forth, which has the potential, at

660
00:43:37,910 --> 00:43:43,729
least, to eliminate fixed line-side
signals and to put an end to the block

661
00:43:43,730 --> 00:43:50,850
system that’s been around for 150 years
by using positive train control and

662
00:43:50,850 --> 00:43:59,410
GPS to basically keep trains apart by
their relative position to each other.

663
00:43:59,809 --> 00:44:04,900
The problem with a block system is
that a block, once it’s established,

664
00:44:05,199 --> 00:44:09,080
is of the same length, and that block
has got to accommodate everything

665
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:14,390
from very long trains to very short
trains, fast trains, slow trains.

666
00:44:15,309 --> 00:44:21,450
And the elimination of a block system
and the use of digital technology

667
00:44:21,820 --> 00:44:26,040
is—if you can imagine, you may have
this on your own car, if you driving

668
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:28,970
along the freeway and you get too
close to the car in front of you get,

669
00:44:28,980 --> 00:44:29,940
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

670
00:44:30,590 --> 00:44:36,800
And so, that’s principle here, that
trains can get so close to the train

671
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:43,370
ahead of them, but no closer because
the GPS signal will say, “Wait a minute.

672
00:44:43,690 --> 00:44:44,970
Got to slow the train down.

673
00:44:45,590 --> 00:44:50,359
Can’t go any faster.” And that offers
the potential for using computers and

674
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:54,819
digital technology to greatly increase
the efficiency of railroad operations.

675
00:44:55,110 --> 00:44:59,330
You know, I jumped right over one
innovation going to the digital world.

676
00:44:59,330 --> 00:45:03,410
I jumped over the whole
transition from steam to diesel.

677
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:06,210
When did the diesel locomotive
come into the picture?

678
00:45:06,210 --> 00:45:09,049
And did we—was that
invented here or elsewhere?

679
00:45:10,510 --> 00:45:14,569
Well, the diesel engine, I think it’s
important to distinguish between the

680
00:45:14,570 --> 00:45:21,550
diesel engine, which is a device that
produces a form of power, usually from

681
00:45:21,820 --> 00:45:28,890
some kind of oil—diesel fuel, whatever—and
a diesel locomotive, which is a platform

682
00:45:28,900 --> 00:45:35,780
with wheels on which a diesel engine is
mounted that, in turn, generates power

683
00:45:35,780 --> 00:45:37,290
that’s transmitted to those wheels.

684
00:45:37,970 --> 00:45:42,780
And most locomotives in use today are
actually diesel electric locomotives,

685
00:45:43,020 --> 00:45:47,079
so the diesel engine generates
electric power, and electric power

686
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:48,839
then turns the wheels to locomotive.

687
00:45:49,139 --> 00:45:49,730
There are others.

688
00:45:49,730 --> 00:45:52,979
There are diesel mechanical systems,
direct drive, diesel hydraulics,

689
00:45:52,990 --> 00:45:54,770
but most are diesel electric.

690
00:45:55,390 --> 00:45:59,390
So, the diesel engine dates to the—I
almost at the last century, but

691
00:45:59,390 --> 00:46:05,800
it’s really the 19th century—Rudolph
Diesel in Germany develops this,

692
00:46:06,099 --> 00:46:09,470
actually as a mechanism to burn
pulverized or powdered coal.

693
00:46:10,240 --> 00:46:14,830
He doesn’t initially see that it’d
be possible to burn what is, perhaps

694
00:46:14,830 --> 00:46:16,750
ironically, now called diesel fuel.

695
00:46:17,590 --> 00:46:23,060
And these engines are designed
for stationary applications or for

696
00:46:23,060 --> 00:46:26,230
maritime use because they’re huge,
they’re massive, they’re heavy.

697
00:46:26,639 --> 00:46:28,630
They won’t even fit in
a railway locomotive.

698
00:46:29,260 --> 00:46:33,900
But early railway engineers—again,
mechanical and electrical

699
00:46:33,900 --> 00:46:38,410
engineers—they see the potential,
and they’ve been experimenting.

700
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:44,180
Even in the very, very late-1800s in the
early years of the 20th century, there are

701
00:46:44,180 --> 00:46:47,270
experiments with self-propelled railcars.

702
00:46:47,279 --> 00:46:52,980
So, basically a passenger car with an
engine in it that can be used to replace

703
00:46:53,260 --> 00:46:58,880
a steam locomotive and passenger cars on
very, very lightly traveled branch lines.

704
00:46:59,599 --> 00:47:03,939
So, a lot of these early railcars,
they use primarily engines that burn,

705
00:47:03,990 --> 00:47:08,980
like, gasoline or kerosene or something
like that, distillate mixtures.

706
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:14,100
Occasionally they’re burning diesel
fuel, and they’re not, you know, hugely

707
00:47:14,100 --> 00:47:15,960
successful, but they’re out there.

708
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:17,450
They’re a path forward.

709
00:47:17,650 --> 00:47:21,530
But what really did it, I think, was
the actions of the government, in

710
00:47:21,530 --> 00:47:23,399
particular the New York State Legislature.

711
00:47:24,049 --> 00:47:28,670
And in 1923 the New York State
Legislature passed a bill known as

712
00:47:28,670 --> 00:47:34,000
the Kaufman Act that banned the use
of steam locomotives within Greater

713
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:35,560
New York, that is the five boroughs.

714
00:47:35,820 --> 00:47:42,230
And for the most part, this is not
a problem for the railroads because

715
00:47:42,300 --> 00:47:46,660
the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New
York Central, and the New Haven have

716
00:47:46,670 --> 00:47:52,589
already electrified their tracks on
the main lines leading into New York.

717
00:47:52,780 --> 00:47:56,970
But there are a lot of little
short switching areas and dockside

718
00:47:56,970 --> 00:48:00,030
facilities where it makes no
sense to install electrification.

719
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:01,780
What do you do?

720
00:48:02,220 --> 00:48:08,569
Well, that increases interest in
internal combustion locomotives.

721
00:48:08,580 --> 00:48:12,960
Now, there’s a certain amount of
legal wrangling as to what the

722
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:17,789
Kaufman Act actually says and
what it means, locomotives other

723
00:48:17,789 --> 00:48:20,160
than steam, electric locomotives.

724
00:48:20,690 --> 00:48:23,850
The Pennsylvania Railroad consults with
their attorney—you know, always check

725
00:48:23,850 --> 00:48:29,000
with the attorneys—and the attorney,
Clarence Heiserman, says, “As I read the

726
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:35,710
legislation, a diesel electric locomotive
qualifies as an electric locomotive,

727
00:48:36,279 --> 00:48:40,900
which means we can use diesels.” And
so, that’s his reading of the letter of

728
00:48:40,900 --> 00:48:43,929
the law. But it wasn’t the Pennsylvania
Railroad that was the first adopter.

729
00:48:44,139 --> 00:48:48,740
It was the Jersey Central, or the Central
Railroad of New Jersey that put into

730
00:48:48,740 --> 00:48:54,219
service—this is 1925, two years after
the Kaufman act—put into service the

731
00:48:54,360 --> 00:49:00,170
first commercially successful, I guess,
diesel locomotive, which was built

732
00:49:00,180 --> 00:49:06,590
by a consortium of builders: General
Electric, Ingersoll Rand for the car

733
00:49:06,590 --> 00:49:11,389
body, mechanical, Westinghouse and so on,
that were involved in the construction of

734
00:49:11,389 --> 00:49:13,730
these early, kind of, diesel locomotives.

735
00:49:13,930 --> 00:49:17,890
The railroads put them into place, not
just on the Jersey Central, but on other

736
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:21,480
railroads as well, because they had
to comply with the terms of the law.

737
00:49:21,660 --> 00:49:25,869
But once they did that, they said,
you know, these things have potential.

738
00:49:26,170 --> 00:49:31,860
They’re far less powerful than steam
locomotives, but we can work these

739
00:49:31,870 --> 00:49:35,350
things almost 24 hours a day, and
that’s not true with steam locomotives.

740
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:41,249
I mean, rule of thumb is, if a railroad
needs to have 20 steam locomotives in

741
00:49:41,250 --> 00:49:47,050
service at a given time, they need to have
40 steam locomotives in their facilities:

742
00:49:47,469 --> 00:49:52,910
half of them working, half of them being
serviced because of the low availability.

743
00:49:53,770 --> 00:49:59,310
And railroads found out pretty quickly
that diesel locomotives were ideally

744
00:49:59,310 --> 00:50:04,640
suited for switching, that is, moving
cars and yards at slow speeds because

745
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:06,140
they had very high tractive effort.

746
00:50:06,359 --> 00:50:12,570
There was a kind of rule of thumb among
railroad motive power officials that said

747
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:19,590
a steam locomotive could haul a train it
couldn’t start, but a diesel locomotive

748
00:50:19,590 --> 00:50:21,180
could start a train it couldn’t haul.

749
00:50:21,509 --> 00:50:26,350
That is, you know, if what you wanted
was to move a long train at 70 miles

750
00:50:26,350 --> 00:50:31,509
an hour across Kansas or wherever,
early diesels were not going to do it.

751
00:50:31,509 --> 00:50:32,890
You need a steam locomotive for that.

752
00:50:33,420 --> 00:50:39,110
But if what you want is to take a very
large group of cars in a freight yard

753
00:50:39,490 --> 00:50:46,570
from a standing stop to five miles an
hour, which is all you need, a diesel

754
00:50:46,570 --> 00:50:48,030
actually has the advantage there.

755
00:50:48,870 --> 00:50:54,469
And so, those early diesels are really
kind of intriguing to railroad executives.

756
00:50:55,259 --> 00:51:01,740
But simultaneously, there’s a kind of
increase in interest in these railcars.

757
00:51:03,140 --> 00:51:08,110
1920s, everybody’s getting a car,
Model T, maybe, but some kind of

758
00:51:08,110 --> 00:51:11,840
a car, so they’re not taking the
train, the passenger train, anymore.

759
00:51:12,389 --> 00:51:16,740
And that’s causing problems for railroads,
especially in these short distance routes.

760
00:51:17,340 --> 00:51:22,350
So, they’re buying more and more railcars,
including cars that are built by companies

761
00:51:22,350 --> 00:51:26,640
like Electro-Motive, which—actually,
I say, ‘built.’ Electro-Motive didn’t

762
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:28,490
build anything; it subcontracted.

763
00:51:28,490 --> 00:51:32,819
All it did is, design these
railcars, carry spare parts

764
00:51:32,830 --> 00:51:34,890
for them, and market them.

765
00:51:34,990 --> 00:51:39,400
And that’s where its skillset really
was: in marketing, not in manufacturing.

766
00:51:39,750 --> 00:51:45,000
And it relied very closely on the Winton
Engine Company based in Cleveland,

767
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:52,060
Ohio, and Winton became sort of
the dominant producer of, sort of,

768
00:51:52,070 --> 00:51:54,799
mid-size internal combustion engines.

769
00:51:55,230 --> 00:51:58,950
And that caught the attention
of, I don’t know, General Motors,

770
00:51:59,070 --> 00:52:05,470
which kind of was a big deal, and
so GM bought Winton in the 1930s.

771
00:52:05,950 --> 00:52:09,409
And then after they bought Winton,
they did some research, and they

772
00:52:09,410 --> 00:52:13,790
realized that Electro-Motive, the
company built these railcars, was the

773
00:52:13,790 --> 00:52:15,860
single largest customer of Winton.

774
00:52:15,860 --> 00:52:19,080
And they said, you know, why
don’t we buy Electro-Motive, too?

775
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:23,180
And so, all of a sudden, General
Motors was now in the railcar

776
00:52:23,180 --> 00:52:28,029
business, which was important for
Electro-Motive because, well, GM had

777
00:52:28,029 --> 00:52:33,930
some really good engineering people
and a lot of money, which always helps.

778
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:38,740
And Electro-Motive began building,
not just these sort of single unit

779
00:52:38,740 --> 00:52:44,709
railcars, but entire trains, like the
Burlington Zephyr, which debuted in

780
00:52:45,690 --> 00:52:54,330
1934, this kind of famous non-stop run
from Denver to Chicago, dawn to dusk.

781
00:52:54,420 --> 00:52:55,530
This is a big deal, right?

782
00:52:55,530 --> 00:52:57,969
This is the height of the
Great Depression, or maybe the

783
00:52:57,969 --> 00:52:59,319
depths of the Great Depression.

784
00:52:59,740 --> 00:53:00,959
I mean, people need a lift.

785
00:53:00,969 --> 00:53:03,549
They need something to
get enthusiastic about.

786
00:53:04,119 --> 00:53:10,720
And so, there’s this brand new,
diesel-powered stainless steel, shiny,

787
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:14,700
really fast train that goes zipping along.

788
00:53:14,849 --> 00:53:18,809
I mean, schools canceled classes
so the kids could line up along the

789
00:53:18,809 --> 00:53:20,980
tracks and watch this thing roar past.

790
00:53:21,810 --> 00:53:25,480
It had incredible newspaper coverage.

791
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:27,810
There was a radio operator on board.

792
00:53:27,820 --> 00:53:33,580
I mean, you know, there are all kinds of
gimmicks, including carrying Zeph, which

793
00:53:33,580 --> 00:53:38,149
was a burro—well, prospectors, Denver,
Colorado, all that kind of thing—so

794
00:53:38,150 --> 00:53:43,410
carrying a burro from Denver to Chicago.

795
00:53:43,410 --> 00:53:49,980
And poor Zeph at one point, the guy
in the baggage car was holding on, on

796
00:53:49,980 --> 00:53:53,960
some rough track, and Zeph, of course,
couldn’t hold on and he tipped over,

797
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:55,779
fell on the guy in the baggage car.

798
00:53:56,210 --> 00:54:00,029
And so, they had to all, kind
of, sort that out and everything.

799
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:07,400
And it was that kind of excitement
that permeated popular culture.

800
00:54:07,410 --> 00:54:12,919
There was even a movie called The Silver
Streak, not the Richard Pryor and Gene

801
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:16,319
Wilder film that came out decades later,
which was Silver Streak without the

802
00:54:16,319 --> 00:54:22,170
‘the.’ But it was a terrible movie—that
is, The Silver Streak—but it featured as

803
00:54:22,170 --> 00:54:24,620
the only memorable character, the train.

804
00:54:25,540 --> 00:54:28,040
The train was in advertisements
and everything, and so

805
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:28,990
everybody’s talking about it.

806
00:54:28,990 --> 00:54:35,179
And railroad executives said, “Wow, this
is a public relations bonanza. We need

807
00:54:35,190 --> 00:54:39,040
streamlined passenger trains powered
by diesel locomotives.” So, they began

808
00:54:39,040 --> 00:54:45,870
buying passenger locomotives because they
were modern and shiny and beautiful, too.

809
00:54:45,870 --> 00:54:51,970
I mean, GM had a styling department that
provided all sorts of artistic renderings

810
00:54:51,970 --> 00:54:56,080
to Electro-Motive: this is what locomotive
should look like, beautiful designs like

811
00:54:56,080 --> 00:55:01,200
the Santa Fe war bonnet scheme and so
forth, and that captured public attention.

812
00:55:01,700 --> 00:55:08,480
And the advantage for Electro-Motive
was that once a railroad introduced

813
00:55:08,490 --> 00:55:15,010
diesels on a route like Chicago to Los
Angeles, they had to build refueling

814
00:55:15,010 --> 00:55:18,790
facilities, they had to build maintenance
shops, they had to train their

815
00:55:18,790 --> 00:55:23,089
employees—and GM help them do that,
Electro-Motive helped them do that—and

816
00:55:23,090 --> 00:55:27,950
that, of course, lowered the effective
cost of adopting even more diesels.

817
00:55:28,850 --> 00:55:31,080
And these early diesels
often weren’t great.

818
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:33,740
I mean, some of the earliest
Electro-Motive diesels, they had a

819
00:55:33,740 --> 00:55:38,939
maintainer on board, was back in the
engine compartment, frantically fixing

820
00:55:38,950 --> 00:55:44,550
things while the train was barreling
through Kansas at 60 or 70 miles an hour.

821
00:55:44,550 --> 00:55:47,859
I mean, OSHA would never
allow that today, I’m sure.

822
00:55:48,219 --> 00:55:53,240
But they work just well enough to
persuade the railroads to keep adopting

823
00:55:53,240 --> 00:55:59,620
these and to persuade companies
like GM to keep putting resources

824
00:55:59,620 --> 00:56:01,220
into its Electro-Motive subsidiary.

825
00:56:01,599 --> 00:56:03,959
But the real prize, of
course, was freight service.

826
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:05,809
That’s where all the money was.

827
00:56:06,379 --> 00:56:11,230
And in 1939, Electro-Motive introduced
the model FT, which was the first

828
00:56:11,230 --> 00:56:14,740
really practical long-distance
mainline freight locomotive.

829
00:56:15,410 --> 00:56:21,669
And not every railroad was—to coin
a phrase—on board with the FT at

830
00:56:21,670 --> 00:56:26,270
first, but certain companies like
the Santa Fe were just astonished.

831
00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:32,240
I mean, they were told by GM and
Electro-Motive executives, “This

832
00:56:32,250 --> 00:56:35,465
is how much it’s going to save you,
this is how efficient it is,” and

833
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:37,630
they said, “Yeah, you know, maybe.”

834
00:56:38,340 --> 00:56:41,569
And when these things went into service,
they kept checking and rechecking their

835
00:56:41,570 --> 00:56:47,879
figures because their estimates of
the potential return on investment for

836
00:56:48,499 --> 00:56:50,299
these locomotives were far too low.

837
00:56:51,099 --> 00:56:55,279
In some cases, they were getting
30 or 40% return on investment

838
00:56:55,830 --> 00:56:57,139
per year from these locomotives.

839
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:00,760
And with that, the days of
steam locomotives were numbered.

840
00:57:01,110 --> 00:57:05,670
World War II prolonged it because, of
course, railroads needed every piece of

841
00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:11,210
motive power that would turn a wheel,
but after 1945, it took basically a

842
00:57:11,210 --> 00:57:15,980
decade for diesels to banish steam
locomotives from American railroads.

843
00:57:16,100 --> 00:57:21,070
And I should point out that the
companies that built steam locomotives,

844
00:57:21,250 --> 00:57:27,239
like Lima and Alco and Baldwin,
they eventually—not initially, but

845
00:57:27,240 --> 00:57:32,380
eventually—saw the handwriting on the
wall, and they began building diesels.

846
00:57:32,790 --> 00:57:37,380
But they all failed, even though they
had a lot of expertise in building

847
00:57:37,380 --> 00:57:42,230
railroad locomotives, diesels were so
different from steam locomotives that they

848
00:57:42,230 --> 00:57:46,830
were basically shut out of the market,
and it was Electro-Motive, ultimately

849
00:57:46,830 --> 00:57:52,350
General Motors, and also General
Electric that dominated the market, not

850
00:57:52,350 --> 00:57:53,840
just in the US, but around the world.

851
00:57:54,580 --> 00:57:57,900
So, it may be that the British,
kind of, invented the steam

852
00:57:57,900 --> 00:58:00,376
locomotive and Americans adapted it.

853
00:58:00,376 --> 00:58:04,889
And it may be that Rudolph Diesel in
Germany developed a diesel engine,

854
00:58:05,230 --> 00:58:11,710
but it was the United States that
perfected and disseminated to the rest

855
00:58:11,710 --> 00:58:16,930
of the world the technology of diesels,
especially diesel electric locomotives.

856
00:58:17,870 --> 00:58:19,310
We’ve had such a great conversation.

857
00:58:19,310 --> 00:58:22,569
I’m afraid we’re running out of time,
but I do want to ask one important

858
00:58:22,570 --> 00:58:24,879
question as we end, and I’d love
to have you back at some time, too.

859
00:58:24,889 --> 00:58:27,310
I really have learned so much from you.

860
00:58:27,540 --> 00:58:28,709
What a great conversation.

861
00:58:28,709 --> 00:58:33,470
But as we look at railways today, why
are they still important in the US?

862
00:58:34,050 --> 00:58:37,960
I talk to people all the time who’ve
been to Europe on vacation or business

863
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:40,820
or whatever, and they come back
and say, “Oh, my goodness, I rode

864
00:58:40,820 --> 00:58:42,069
the trains. They’re so wonderful.

865
00:58:42,070 --> 00:58:46,460
Why can’t we have a train system like
they have in Europe?” And we don’t,

866
00:58:46,460 --> 00:58:51,049
and for a lot of reasons, probably
won’t, but even if what they’re

867
00:58:51,050 --> 00:58:54,070
saying is true of passenger service,
it’s not true of freight traffic.

868
00:58:54,220 --> 00:58:57,710
And the reality is, the United
States has, by far and away, the

869
00:58:57,719 --> 00:59:01,140
best system of railroad freight
transportation in the world.

870
00:59:01,259 --> 00:59:07,020
In the United States, trains move
28% of traffic, that’s by ton mile.

871
00:59:07,020 --> 00:59:11,700
If you calculate it in terms of the value
of commodities and so on, then trucks

872
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:15,650
kind of have the advantage, but railroads
are extraordinarily efficient, they can

873
00:59:15,650 --> 00:59:20,330
move far more freight over a far longer
distance on a gallon of fuel than any

874
00:59:20,330 --> 00:59:25,470
other form of transportation, trucks,
certainly airplanes, they have much lower

875
00:59:25,470 --> 00:59:28,790
emission standards, which is important
when we talk about climate change.

876
00:59:28,870 --> 00:59:30,830
They make our roads safer, right?

877
00:59:30,860 --> 00:59:35,590
I mean, every truck removed from
the highway makes the highway safer.

878
00:59:36,130 --> 00:59:39,919
Put it as a container, put it on
a flat car, and carry it by rail.

879
00:59:40,080 --> 00:59:43,600
Railroads employ 100,000 people
directly and with the economic

880
00:59:43,640 --> 00:59:47,400
multiplier effect, all the people
that they employ indirectly as well.

881
00:59:47,470 --> 00:59:52,080
And they do this without the
lavish government subsidies that

882
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:58,200
are expended on air travel, on
highways, on inland waterways.

883
00:59:58,500 --> 01:00:04,220
So, railroads are the only mode of
transportation where everything,

884
01:00:05,020 --> 01:00:09,010
from tracks to equipment to their
operating system is owned and

885
01:00:09,010 --> 01:00:13,309
managed by private enterprise rather
than by some government entity.

886
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:17,559
So, they don’t have access to
government-built airports or

887
01:00:17,570 --> 01:00:20,130
government-built interstates
or government-built barge

888
01:00:20,150 --> 01:00:21,170
canals or what have you.

889
01:00:21,470 --> 01:00:26,880
If you sit down and have lunch
today and you eat a sandwich, the

890
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:30,140
bread in that sandwich was made with
wheat that was transported by rail.

891
01:00:30,929 --> 01:00:34,430
If you have a glass of milk, you
pour it out of a plastic container

892
01:00:34,430 --> 01:00:38,080
that was made from petrochemical
products that were delivered

893
01:00:38,820 --> 01:00:41,120
along the chemical coast, by rail.

894
01:00:41,250 --> 01:00:45,480
If it’s starting to get dark and
you flip on a light switch, chances

895
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:49,890
are the electricity that powers
those lights was generated by

896
01:00:49,890 --> 01:00:52,480
coal that was transported by rail.

897
01:00:52,949 --> 01:00:57,450
So, in every aspect of our lives, we
depend on railroad transportation, even

898
01:00:57,450 --> 01:00:59,350
if we ourselves do not ride trains.

899
01:00:59,780 --> 01:01:04,490
I will say, my time in Illinois—I lived
there for a few years—I was a frequent

900
01:01:04,500 --> 01:01:07,620
user of Amtrak from Springfield,
Illinois, to Chicago and back.

901
01:01:07,630 --> 01:01:08,859
It was great.

902
01:01:08,889 --> 01:01:12,040
I appreciated them so much, and
it kept me from having to drive

903
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:15,080
three hours up and down [laugh] the
interstate for meetings in Chicago.

904
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:17,710
So, I appreciated Amtrak for sure.

905
01:01:18,070 --> 01:01:22,250
And Amtrak has enormous potential,
especially for, kind of, short and medium

906
01:01:22,250 --> 01:01:24,330
distance routes, 500 miles or less.

907
01:01:24,389 --> 01:01:28,190
And I mentioned the issue of
European high speed railways.

908
01:01:28,660 --> 01:01:31,950
I don’t see that happening in
the United States anytime soon.

909
01:01:32,190 --> 01:01:35,500
We’ll see what happens with the California
High Speed Rail Project, which is

910
01:01:35,500 --> 01:01:40,070
vastly over budget and taking vastly
longer than anticipated, and seems to

911
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:43,699
be a kind of an object lesson in how
not to build a high speed rail system.

912
01:01:44,309 --> 01:01:48,880
But I think the United States—and
Amtrak—have enormous potential

913
01:01:48,890 --> 01:01:53,020
for higher speed rail, maybe
125 miles an hour or less.

914
01:01:53,310 --> 01:01:55,150
We see that with Brightline in Florida.

915
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:59,000
Maybe in the future, Brightline
West in California and Nevada.

916
01:01:59,080 --> 01:02:00,750
And so, there’s a lot
of potential for that.

917
01:02:00,950 --> 01:02:04,609
And you mentioned the advantage
of avoiding highway travel.

918
01:02:05,100 --> 01:02:09,879
And what people, even in Europe,
increasingly seem to want is not so much

919
01:02:10,050 --> 01:02:16,700
a fast trip, but a comfortable trip,
a safe trip, a trip where they can be

920
01:02:16,700 --> 01:02:22,029
productive—thanks to WiFi, travel means
you can get out your laptop or your

921
01:02:22,029 --> 01:02:28,160
cell phone and do something—and a trip
where the travel times are predictable.

922
01:02:28,370 --> 01:02:31,800
So, often we go by car, it could
take an hour, could take three hours,

923
01:02:32,530 --> 01:02:35,959
maybe two hours on a train is longer
than an hour by car, but if people

924
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:40,030
know it’s going to be two hours
every time, that’s a big advantage.

925
01:02:40,139 --> 01:02:40,800
It was.

926
01:02:40,809 --> 01:02:44,890
And I’ve used the Amtrak up the East
Coast as well, from DC up to New York

927
01:02:44,890 --> 01:02:48,705
several times, and Boston as well,
so avoiding that traffic and having

928
01:02:48,980 --> 01:02:51,619
that consistency was very important.

929
01:02:51,929 --> 01:02:54,640
As we close out, Albert, I just want to
ask, what are you working on right now?

930
01:02:54,759 --> 01:02:57,300
Are you working on a book,
or what’s next for you?

931
01:02:57,839 --> 01:03:01,920
What’s next for me is a history of
Conrail, or the Consolidated Rail

932
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:06,150
Corporation, which was—it’s still in
business, actually, as a successor

933
01:03:06,150 --> 01:03:11,160
company, but it was formed in 1976
out of the wreckage—and that’s not

934
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:14,569
too strong of a word to use—the
wreckage of the Northeastern rail

935
01:03:14,570 --> 01:03:18,990
system, including the bankrupt Penn
Central, which was a successor to the

936
01:03:18,990 --> 01:03:21,600
Pennsylvania Railroad, the company
that I’ve written extensively on.

937
01:03:21,780 --> 01:03:25,600
And so, the Conrail story is
important for any number of reasons.

938
01:03:25,610 --> 01:03:30,929
It marks, kind of, the renaissance
of the American railroad industry,

939
01:03:31,080 --> 01:03:35,620
as the railroads kind of come back
from the brink, from the abyss.

940
01:03:36,550 --> 01:03:41,740
It’s an example of how the government
stepped in, almost at the last minute,

941
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:47,780
to rescue the railroads from the
problems that ill-advised government

942
01:03:47,820 --> 01:03:51,520
regulation and subsidization of
competing modes of transportation

943
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:52,870
had caused in the first place.

944
01:03:53,359 --> 01:03:59,690
And so, the government launches Conrail
as a largely governmental Corporation,

945
01:03:59,870 --> 01:04:04,630
owning about 80% of Conrail stock, and
pouring substantial amounts of money into

946
01:04:04,630 --> 01:04:06,450
remedying years of deferred maintenance.

947
01:04:07,190 --> 01:04:12,250
And thanks to dedicated employees
and a really, really good management

948
01:04:12,250 --> 01:04:14,560
team, Conrail became profitable.

949
01:04:15,090 --> 01:04:18,580
It defied the naysayers, people who
said, “Well, when the government gets

950
01:04:18,580 --> 01:04:21,550
involved in business, the results are
going to be disastrous.” They weren’t.

951
01:04:21,599 --> 01:04:23,630
They were spectacular.

952
01:04:23,759 --> 01:04:29,299
Conrail was privatized in the largest
IPO in American history up to that time,

953
01:04:29,840 --> 01:04:33,649
and since split apart among two other
railroad, CSX and Norfolk Southern.

954
01:04:34,210 --> 01:04:41,360
So, it’s an important story that way, but
it’s also a story that has to do with the

955
01:04:41,370 --> 01:04:47,600
deregulation of the rail industry with the
Staggers Act in 1980, part of this broad

956
01:04:47,629 --> 01:04:52,080
package of regulatory reform implemented
during the Carter administration, which

957
01:04:52,080 --> 01:04:58,389
also included airline, truck, banking, and
telecommunications deregulation, and it’s

958
01:04:58,389 --> 01:05:05,189
really that process and the success of
Conrail that launched and validated these

959
01:05:05,190 --> 01:05:11,940
sort of neo-liberal economic revolution
that sort of shaped American economic

960
01:05:11,940 --> 01:05:14,100
policy with the past 40 or so years.

961
01:05:14,819 --> 01:05:18,399
And so, the story is, yes, about a
railroad coming back from the brink,

962
01:05:18,849 --> 01:05:24,859
but also about a railroad that brought
about and exemplifies a whole new

963
01:05:24,860 --> 01:05:27,359
phase in American economic history.

964
01:05:28,210 --> 01:05:31,410
And I’m working on this for the first
time, I’ve never done this before, but

965
01:05:31,410 --> 01:05:37,120
I’m co-authoring a book with Jonathan
Broder, who’s the former vice president

966
01:05:37,120 --> 01:05:39,459
of legal affairs for Conrail, now retired.

967
01:05:40,109 --> 01:05:43,569
He has got, of course, a great
skill set to bring to the project.

968
01:05:44,290 --> 01:05:46,700
And so, we’re in the
preliminary research stage.

969
01:05:47,560 --> 01:05:51,200
It’s a complicated project,
but it’s an exciting one.

970
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:52,660
I’m really looking forward to doing it.

971
01:05:53,010 --> 01:05:54,410
I’m very much looking forward to that.

972
01:05:54,410 --> 01:05:57,260
We’ll tell you, we’ve been trying to
figure out ways we’re going to partner

973
01:05:57,260 --> 01:06:01,330
here locally with the Southern Appalachian
Railroad Museum, and when I mentioned

974
01:06:01,330 --> 01:06:05,490
to those fine folks that I was going to
talk to you, that you have great fans.

975
01:06:05,490 --> 01:06:11,190
The three volume Pennsylvania Railroad
series you did is revered among them.

976
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:14,139
So, I wanted to pass that on to
you, that you have some great

977
01:06:14,139 --> 01:06:16,340
fans here in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

978
01:06:16,920 --> 01:06:18,239
Well, I’m glad to hear that.

979
01:06:18,239 --> 01:06:22,440
And I wrote the book, it was something
of a challenge because, as you mentioned,

980
01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:27,970
I’m a history professor, and so we tend
to write for academic audiences and inside

981
01:06:27,980 --> 01:06:29,600
the ivory tower and that sort of thing.

982
01:06:30,300 --> 01:06:34,350
But I also want to make it accessible
to a kind of broad, popular audience

983
01:06:34,369 --> 01:06:39,020
because I think it’s an American story,
not just a history story or an academic

984
01:06:39,020 --> 01:06:41,250
discourse, but it’s a story about America.

985
01:06:41,850 --> 01:06:47,180
And some of the best compliments I’ve
received about the three volumes, the

986
01:06:47,180 --> 01:06:51,380
Pennsylvania Railroad series, are when
people say to me, “You know, I was kind

987
01:06:51,380 --> 01:06:56,080
of surprised, but I was happy that you
don’t write like a college professor.”

988
01:06:56,510 --> 01:06:58,509
And I thought, you know, that’s good.

989
01:06:58,510 --> 01:06:59,530
I like that.

990
01:06:59,530 --> 01:07:01,230
I can accept that.

991
01:07:01,230 --> 01:07:03,900
And, in fact, I kind of like that a lot.

992
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:05,240
Yeah, take that as a victory.

993
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:05,479
And—

994
01:07:05,969 --> 01:07:06,999
[crosstalk] victory, yes.

995
01:07:06,999 --> 01:07:08,899
There you go [laugh] . Albert,
I can’t tell you how much I

996
01:07:08,900 --> 01:07:10,080
enjoyed this conversation.

997
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:12,569
Thank you so much for
joining us on AMSEcast.

998
01:07:12,570 --> 01:07:15,930
Well, thank you for the invitation,
and please do keep in touch.

999
01:07:21,080 --> 01:07:23,589
Thank you for joining us on
this episode of AMSEcast.

1000
01:07:24,170 --> 01:07:28,509
For more information on this topic or
any others, you can always visit us at

1001
01:07:28,969 --> 01:07:35,150
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1002
01:07:35,650 --> 01:07:38,770
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1003
01:07:38,870 --> 01:07:40,770
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1004
01:07:41,090 --> 01:07:45,229
You can also shop at our online store
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1005
01:07:45,719 --> 01:07:49,160
Thanks to our production team with Matt
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1006
01:07:49,160 --> 01:07:53,000
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1007
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:56,989
Management, and Office of Legacy
Management, as well as Oak Ridge National

1008
01:07:56,990 --> 01:08:02,830
Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security
Complex, NNSA, and the AMSE Foundation.

1009
01:08:03,330 --> 01:08:05,710
And of course, thanks to our
wonderful guests today, and

1010
01:08:05,710 --> 01:08:06,900
to all of you for listening.

1011
01:08:07,380 --> 01:08:10,210
I hope you’ll join us for
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1012
01:08:12,780 --> 01:08:15,750
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01:08:15,750 --> 01:08:20,340
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01:08:20,380 --> 01:08:23,839
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01:08:24,609 --> 01:08:29,000
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1016
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:30,590
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01:08:30,979 --> 01:08:33,910
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1018
01:08:33,910 --> 01:08:37,779
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1019
01:08:37,790 --> 01:08:42,410
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1020
01:08:42,410 --> 01:08:46,450
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1021
01:08:47,330 --> 01:08:50,640
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1024
01:08:57,920 --> 01:09:00,220
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01:09:01,310 --> 01:09:06,099
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1026
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