Ask me about: Railroads

[Redfrogcrab]

Howdy! Tis but I, your (hopefully) favorite crustacean, and today, I'd like to share my knowledge I've Acquired about Railroads, specifically about Locomotives (how they work, the differences between the kinds of motive power, how they're run, etc.), Rolling stock, Opperations, the tracks themselves, Etc. Ask away!

 

[Gurkhal]

Roughly how fast can a single track railroad be built?

How expensive would it reasonably be to acquire tools and expertise for a newcomer to this game?

And perhaps what are the main factors, in you opinion, that can speed up or slow down a newcomer state to this game?

I would be interested in this for a story's setting and background.

 

[Finchbearer]

As a Brit, this question feels strange. Do you mean North American rail? Or what country are you referring to? All countries with rail?

 

[Gurkhal]

I was more thinking in general but perhaps with a less developed or more hinterland idea about where the railroad would be built. In terms of time period say around 1890-1900 or so.

 

[Finchbearer]

Sorry not your question Gurkhal - I was referring to the original post but should have specified.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Roughly how fast can a single track railroad be built?

How expensive would it reasonably be to acquire tools and expertise for a newcomer to this game?

And perhaps what are the main factors, in you opinion, that can speed up or slow down a newcomer state to this game?

I would be interested in this for a story's setting and background.

very much depends on the time period I think. I found this with a quick search: Digital History.

Depends on the terrain, but on easy terrain, it seems like 8-10 miles a day was a fast speed.

In general I think the main speed and money issue is actually in government and legal fees. Especially nowadays. The land you're building on belongs to someone, and they probably don't like getting railroad laid in their backyard. Or maybe they do of course...

 

[pmmg]

Most of my extended family has a connection to the railroad. My Dad, and some of my uncles, and even a cousin or two, worked on the railroads in some capacity, and my grand parents as well. I kind of live in MD because its on the Baltimore side of the B&O. But....I have no real interest in railroads personally.

To the point, that I never thought I would enjoy a book about rail roads, and while it just seems to be that you can mention Mrs. Rand without drawing the usual comments, Atlas Shrugged is a book I enjoyed, and starts off heavy with Railroads and Steel production. In fact, as the book is kind of divided into three different types of narratives, the opening, which is all the stuff about the railroad, I found far more interesting than I would have ever thought. The super hero stuff at the end was kind of...strange, but... I'd read it again just for the opening.

 

[Finchbearer]

I was more thinking in general but perhaps with a less developed or more hinterland idea about where the railroad would be built. In terms of time period say around 1890-1900 or so.

The location would be important. Or the location you’re inspired by. By this time 1890-1900 in England, Scotland and Wales it was called railway not railroad anymore. I know the very first locomotives were invented for the purposes of transporting coal from the mines and to cities with that being the main fuel source at that time, then rail became widely used for passenger transportation, then it went all over the world especially the commonwealth. North America is very different. Different type of track, different culture - more for freight, unless you’re on the east coast maybe as pmmg says above.

 

[pmmg]

Given the resurgence of my love of westerns, the railroad is playing a lot more heavily in some of the stuff I am watching. Railways opened up the whole of the country for those in the east, and made it much easier to travel and settle....less you were a native, in which case, they probably had much the same feeling I have when I see AI coming out way

England did not really need a railroad to connect everything. They had a lot of other ways to do it.

 

[Gurkhal]

The location would be important. Or the location you’re inspired by. By this time 1890-1900 in England, Scotland and Wales it was called railway not railroad anymore. I know the very first locomotives were invented for the purposes of transporting coal from the mines and to cities with that being the main fuel source at that time, then rail became widely used for passenger transportation, then it went all over the world especially the commonwealth. North America is very different. Different type of track, different culture - more for freight, unless you’re on the east coast maybe as pmmg says above.

Location is of course important but given that its taking place in a fantasy world I'm not sure how much it would compare with either England or the US. I don't feel that either of them would fit very well with what I'm thinking about.

I can give more information about the parts if you want but I'd rather avoid posting walls of text about "my" world in a thread unless its needed to get the advice that I need.

PS: OP haven't been on the site since three weeks ago, I had hoped he would know a bit or two about railroads and share it with out.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Railways opened up the whole of the country for those in the east, and made it much easier to travel and settle....less you were a native, in which case, they probably had much the same feeling I have when I see AI coming out way

Funny that you should mention that. Railways actually had many of the same reactions as AI is getting now, or mobile phones had at the end of the 90's, or the internet had, or all the other technical revolutions had.

There were people complaining about how railways were going to end our way of life and ruin our culture and destroy all our jobs. I've seen (serious) newpaper articles about how trains going too fast were going to kill their passengers or make cows go mad. New technologies always seem to get the same fearful reactions from the general public.

 

[pmmg]

Well...Railways, Cellphones, and Internet did change our way of life, did change our cultures, and did destroy jobs, so...

I suspect you are saying, the these things had many naysayers, but ultimately, the fears were unwarranted, or drowned out by the positive aspects of what came.

But, really this makes little difference to the next innovation. Its like saying past performance is indicative of future gains, which any stock broker will tell you is something you don't use as its not a reliable statement. Saying, it happened before and nothing bad came is not sufficient to say the next one will follow the same pattern. Like a four year old turkey approaching thanksgiving, that past would tell them it comes and goes and nothing bad happens...but one year...

If you are wanting me to say, AI is another of those things that everyone fears, and wont they look like fools when we have it and we all look back. then....

I will say, 'there is good and bad in everything, and AI, in many places will have a lot of good aspects, and it is likely that it will improve large portions of the human condition on the planet'.

Now the BUT....

But...

With all the examples, railroads, cellphones, internet, what we dont have is the world where they didn't happen to compare them to. So there is no way to know if we are truly better off for having them than if they had never come about. And all three of them (and all innovations) also had a negative impact to go along with the positive. Yeah, we can stay glued to our phones and stay up on social media, but how often do the kids leave the house to go see actual other human beings today? Things change, for the better or not is hard to measure.

And....I can remain concerned for one part of the whole and still recognize that the new thing will have good impact elsewhere. Such that, I can say the telegraph will kill the pony express, and put all those people out of work, and be completely right, cause it did, while maintaining that the telegraph over all is good for other purposes. So, when I look at AI, I can point to stuff where I think it will be a big help. But I can also point to stuff where it will so dramatically impact it, as to make it obsolete.

AI is not like the railroad. AI will have a great impact on the creative world. Make most of us obsolete. Its already killing cover art designers, voice actors, animation, and movie studios. I think the creative world is where humanity will matter most. If machines take it from us, we've lost something of ourselves in it. I wont be cheering that.

But I will leave it to each individual to figure out what it means to them.
'
I will assert though, that if you bring me the creative work of AI and call it your own, get ready for disdain.

 

[Finchbearer]

Uh oh did someone mention AI.

AI as comparable to rail? I am not so sure. I think AI is more comparable to the Industrial Revolution in general.

There was a mass reluctance to move towards mechanisation, and a lot of it was met with trepidation, and rightly so. Mechanisation replaced a lot of older methods that were time consuming or otherwise very laborious if done by hand. Lots of people lost their jobs, but many people also gained work. It turned the rural working classes to city dwelling working classes, though arguably there were more issues related to poor living conditions and further entrapment.

With the advent of industrialisation there would have been a bedding in stage, finding out what could be mechanised versus what technology could stay the same. Finding out where it would be better for a human being to be employed rather than using a machine. Some things can only be done by a human or animal. Forest management for example is much better done on a smaller scale and with horses rather than machinery that cannot navigate the undulations of a forest floor. Hand sewing clothing at the end stage of garment production is another example.

AI is much the same I think in many ways, and remember the purpose of AI is not just to generate shit art, it is used in medicine, engineering, in research. I think it’s always better when it is a collaboration rather than a replacing of something so fundamentally human.

As for rail, it would have been alarming to be able to travel so fast, even though the first steam trains that carried passengers were really quite slow in modern terms. It would have been frightening. But being able to go to another city and get there within the hour was revolutionary. I don’t think AI can boast that.

 

[pmmg]

I think AI is just going to be the conversation of the future till we are all blue in the face


(Also, the comment I made on the Rail Road was more from the perspective of how the Native Indian population might have viewed them. Each new track was more incursion into their land. I am sure many of them had a sick feeling about it).

 

[Demesnedenoir]

And how much can a pair of man-eating lions slow down a rail bridge's construction? heh heh. Building across Africa had to be interesting. On the one hand, the tech wasn't new, but the regions had to present obstacles.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I suspect you are saying, the these things had many naysayers, but ultimately, the fears were unwarranted, or drowned out by the positive aspects of what came.

I wasn't trying to give an opinion about the fall-out of said technologies, or about AI. Sorry if I gave that impression. I definitely don't want to turn this into another tread about AI. We've had plenty of those. I was trying to give some ideas of the sort of stuff you could include in your story or world building.

When we look back on the technological changes of the past with a broad view, we tend to only see the long term effects and the positives. We forget that a lot of the same worries keep coming back again and again. We've had a lot of economic cycles which repeat along roughly the same pattern. If you're interested in the topic, search for Schumpeter and Long waves of innovation.

Railroads are a great example. We see it as glorious, as conquering the wild west, as bringing people together. However, we tend to forget all the worries and issues and societal changes they brought with them. Or we tend to forget that over 4 or so technological revolutions, about 90% of all jobs, most of which were agriculture related, have disappeared in the western world. They were replaced by other jobs, and I'm much happier working my job with a good salary than I probably would have been working hard manual labor on a farm somewhere. But it still sucked if you did work on that farm, and couldn't do anything else, and your job simply disappeared more or less overnight.

It's something you can easily ignore in a story about railroads of course. But if you do want to dig into it, then I think it can add some nice depth and conflict to the story.