Old railroad laws

[SteamGene]

Actually, there were extremely accurate clocks as early as the end of the 18th century.  Of course they were quite expensive and a bit fragile. 
Gene

[SteamGene]

I just checked.  Every degree of longitude equals four minutes difference in time.  Remelmber, longitude is not parallel. 
Gene

[rogertra]

"Standard Time" was the creation of Sir Sandford Fleming the Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway as he found the existing times chaotic for organizing trains, their arrival and departure times. Passengers would carry several pocket watches, each one labeled for a different city. Station-masters also found it inconvenient.

Fleming felt the solution to his railway woes was the adoption of a universal method of time that would work in Canada and around the world. he first publicly presented this idea while lecturing in Toronto at the Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Scientific Knowledge. He recommended 24 time zones, world wide.

As with most new and unique ideas, it was rejected by governments and scientists. Some people even felt he was interfering with nature and God, they called him a Communist! Through Fleming's explanations and tenacious attitude, official approval came and standard time went into effect on January 1st, 1885.

[Seasaltchap]

Sheldon : There you are - another First, 60 years before American railroads.

Terry2foot : I've "Shot the Sun" - and it is a crapshoot with a sextant!

You must live in a very sunny clime: we go for days in the UK without seeing the Sun!

Can we have a VOTE on it!

[Atlantic Central]

Stewart,

It is just amazing that we Yanks even survived this long, being so backward and missguided and what not. What was it Cornwallis called us just before we sent him home, a "rabble"?

I'll give you this one but, it was really only 35 years, remember we did this on our own in 1883 (Rogers Canadian version not withstanding), not waiting for "government" to "save" us.

The real point being that until the 1870's there was no need for this at all. Most US railroads before the War of Northern Aggression where independent short lines with little or no interchange with other lines, built in a number of different guages. So it was easy for them to each keep their own time and own schedules.

After the War Between the States, Standard guage-enacted-1862 universial-1886, consolidation of smaller lines into larger systems, the telegraph-1851, the transcontential connection-1869, the air brake-1872, electric block signals -1872 and automatic coupler-1868, all advanced our railroads at an alarming pace. Standard time (Railroad time in this country, no matter what Canada did) was an obvious out growth of this advancement. When it was needed, it happened, in spite of big brother actually. Several educated people had been advocating standard time for quite a while, no one in Washington was interested.

1898 - Railroad Safety Appliance Act required all cars for interchange to have air brakes and automatic couplers. They still hook them together with chains 100 years later in other places all around the world. Maybe we're not so backward after all.

When did they put air brakes on freight trains in the UK?

I think we have them on that one, by a similar amount of time. But in their defense, they didn't need the same degree of braking for their smaller lighter trains. For that the vacuum brake worked just fine.

Sheldon

[SteamGene]

Sheldon, actually the damnyankees had pretty much agreed to standard gauge before the War For Southern Independence.  I read once the number of times Longstreet's Corps had to disembark and reemark because of the differences in gauge as they went from the Army of Northern Virginia to stiffen the Army of the Tennesse which, with their aid, finally won a battle.   "Twas Dixie with the hodge podge of gauges. 
And, of course, until the 1870s or so, most everybody lived east of the Mississippi and the eastern time zone goes almost 2/3rds of the way to the Mississippi.
Gene

[Atlantic Central]

Gene,

Yes, I just looked up and added the dates to a lot of that stuff. Standard guage adopted 1862. But conversion in the south after the war was as slow as reconstruction itself.

Sheldon

[SteamGene]

Sheldon, I was thinking it was 1862 or 3, but not sure.  The reason for the adoption was most of the Damnyankee railroads already were, even without Roman war chariots signing up to oppose Bobby Lee. 
Gene