How can many people resit only on a.c.?
What roads didn't permited the opening of the top of the Dutch Door.
It's intresting that road as a term is used for railways too. I think most people of non-English speaking countries learn that road means a place where vehicles raging from bicycle and hore wagon to automobiles, truck, buses are runing. If it wasn't for my passion, I would probably think of the same.
Same with air-line (airline). Oh, airline, airplanes. Not neceseraly. For the sake of curiosity I looked on a 1965 English - Romanian Dictonary and air-line refers only to a line served by airplanes.
But how did "Norfolk and Western" treated non-White costumers, comparing to "Seabord Airline" and "Atlantic Coast Line"?
Before "Autotrian Coporation" was any company that offered the service of tacking you automobile on the train?

"Seabord Airline" was one of the last railway companies to run passanger trains at 100 miles per hour, in the '50's or '60's. They had for 2-3 years a powerful manager. But after him, 100 m.p.h. was gone."

IIRC there was a "big" train wreck out in the US Mid-west (Illinois, Nebraska ?) in the late 50's or early 60's where a passenger train running at 90-100 mph (as allowed by the RR company rules) slammed into a stopped freight train with lots of lives lost. IIRC the freight train stopped quickly (emergency braking) and the signals where not far enough apart to tell the Engineer of the passenger train there was trouble ahead. It's been a while since I read the accident report so I could be mistaken. But it was not strictly human error, the Engineer of the passenger train had something like 10 seconds to see a Stop signal and respond in time to prevent the wreck.

The spacing of the signals was such that an Engineer would have to be staring totally out the front of the engine 100% of the time with absolutely no other tasks (checking the speedometer, looking at a watch, calling the dispatcher on the radio) in order for the signal system to work with safety in mind. The freight train stopped just outside of a signal block and the passenger train passed the distant signal something like 10 seconds after it changed to Stop. The passenger train Engineer saw a Clear signal and proceeded, he looked away while passing the signal and it dropped to Stop just before he passed it. It was a human factors defect in the signal system design that would allow this to occur once in a million times.

In response the FRA (and or the ICC ?) instituted stricter rules that mandated higher track and signalling standards be installed/maintained by the Railroad companies for running above 79 mph. In response the railroad companies just lowered the maximum authorized speed (MAS) to 79 mph for passenger trains (by then a mostly money losing business).

Until Amtrak upgraded some of the tracks they owned to allow the next highest speed (115 mph) almost all passenger trains in the US where limited to 79 mph. This was a gubermint diktat, not a RR company policy.

Passenger trains running at 100 mph and freight trains running at 30-40 mph do not mix well.

Before the advent of flight, the term "air line" referred to the shortest, straightest possible alignment between to places. The Seaboard Air Line name tried to capitalize on their engineering for minimally curved alignments, which was of course impossible and given they also absorbed older existing railroads into their system wasn't entirely that way from the beginning. SAL did and their successor (CSX) does have the longest tangent (straight) section of trackage in the US, located in South Carolina, which is probably adequate justification for the name. It is crossed by the ghost of a railroad bridge - concrete piers that gradually rise on one side and descend on the other, like the old plastic ones for HO gauge models.

Here is a reference to the wreck I mentioned;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naperville_train_disaster

After that the FRA set speed limits for the RR's and eventually the RR's just downgraded their MAS to match their existing signalling systems. Not much point in upgrading the signalling system for a dwindling demand for high speed railroad passenger trains.

High speed wasn't good when competing with other forms of transportation?
P.R.R. introduced some automatization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2VOhIQczOU

"High speed wasn't good when competing with other forms of transportation?"

Well the difference between a train running at 80 or 100 mph did not make much difference when the airplanes (and especially the jet airplanes) could do 250-350 mph. The RR companies in the USA back in the 1950's and 60's did not see the customer demand for 100 mph trains.

The NYCRR had ATS (Automatic Train Stop) since the 1930's that would (in theory) stop a train before a wreck could occur. But those systems are not perfect, no system can be 100% perfect, there is always a way for something bad to happen. Even with airplanes things still go bad.

The vestibules were not air conditioned. So if you moved between the cars to go to a lounge car, a cafe (light meal service) car, or dining car, you were briefly exposed to the outside air temperature.

Heating was done with steam from the locomotive using along covered, radiating pipes along the bottom of the side walls. Self-propelled electric cars used heating resistors. Amtrak cars utilizing "head-end" or "hotel" power from the locomotives wasl also a form of electric heating. Steam heating came into existence In the late 19th century. Before that time coal burning stoves, sometimes one at each end of a car, was the method of heating.

In between coal stoves and steam heat there was a circulating hot water system that -- like the later steam -- used radiating pipes. The water was heated within a coal burning stove using a circular coiled pipe. The water then flowed by convection through the radiating pipes. This was called a Baker heater after the firm producing the developed thhis form of heating for commercial buildings, residences, and railroad cars.

In the NEC, Metroliners running at 125 mph took the NY-WAS market from the airlines.

As to referring to RR's as roads, some of the earliest RR's used two words: Rail Road. Current examples are Strasburg Rail Road (chartered 1832) and Long Island Rail Road (chartered 1834)

Phil Mulligan

"In the NEC, Metroliners running at 125 mph took the NY-WAS market from the airlines."

Yes, but that is a very small part of the entire USA landmass. NY-WAS is a VERY TINY part of a VERY BIG country.

Here we are 50 years after the Metroliners and trains running at 125 mph have made no appreciable inroads against long distance airplane travel (NY-WAS - 300 miles, NY-LA 3000 miles).

"In Europe they think a hundred miles is a really far distance, in America they think 100 years is a really long time."

I know about the history of heating. But it beats me up how new cars, made specifically for beeing pulled by Diesel-electric or electric locomotives (not steam locomotives) used steam heating in stad of beeing from start equyped with electric heating.

In Romania, for steam heating, when we quit steam locomotives (some trains had steam locomotives attached to them for the purpose oh heating) we used heating cars: http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/ro/car ... r/pix.html
Double deck trains sets (4 inseparable cars) imported from forme East-Germany (G.D.R.) starting with 1962 and more modern passanger cars manufactured in Romania begining with 1963 or 1964 could be both steam heat or electric heat (sleeping cars still neded coal for extra heating or hot water). But electric heating was possbile untill about 10 years ago (or maybe a little bit more) only on electrified railroads.
Oh, in 1964 no standard gauge line with passanger traffic was electrified, the 1st portion, Predeal - Braşov (steap climing) was open to electrified traffic on 9th of December 1965. From Braşov to Predeal to Valea Prahovei (Valley of Prahova) to Ploieşti * (Youarerains) to Bucureşti (Bucharest) the 1st train pulled by an electric locomotive was inaugurated on 15th or 16th of Februrary 1969. 16th of Ferbruary is a date writen in blood in 1933.

* "eşti" (which literally means "you are") seems to be a pluar of "escu", escu beeing the termination of many Romanian family names. In the old days in stad of eşti, the names of the cities where terminated in eşci, for eg Bucureşti beeing Bucureşci.

There is a joke wiht Ploieşti and Piteşti (youarehinding)
Î: Care e diferenţa dintre Ploieşti şi Piteşti?
R: La Ploieşti poţi să te piteşti, dar la Piteşti nu poţi să te ploieşti
something like:
Q: What is the differece between Ploieshti and Piteshti
A: At Ploieshti you can hide, but at Piteshti you can't get yourself weten by the rain.


Talking about fast rails:
In Romania the rail between Bucharest and Constanţa (Constantza, Constance) ** was modernized. Constanţa is the begning of the sea side (well there are 2 reasort South of it so not quite the begining; the 2 resorts had rail service in the old days). Through all that there is one freeway to there, people from Bucharest are still using the train, because it's a fast route.
Bucharest - Constantza is a line that most corresponds to an "air-line".

** the town is named after the Emperor Constnatine the Great
before that, it was named Tomis. There was a Bucharest - Constantza train that was named Tomis.

The problem in U.S.A. is the continental divide which is North - South bound, so trains have a lot to climbe and descend. In Europe, most of it is East - West bound, so less mountains to cross, so the train ca go faster on East - West then in the U.S.A.

Hardly a problem, but an opportunity. And, we have two mountain ranges running N/S, one East of the Mississippi basin, one west, which doubles the fun and interest. Remember that mountain ranges provide for a lot of mineral extraction industries as well as hydropower.

Eastern Europe is a bit mysterious to us thanks to decades of Iron Curtain separation. Thanks for your information and descriptions of Romania, which many of us associate mostly with the Dracula movies.

Yeah, many people are hearing about Dracula, but they don't do much resarch after that.

East and West are having both a big population, so connection them faster by train would have had been intresting.
By curiosity, does any one knows in in 1959 there was any direct train between Memphis and Los Angeles?

Talking about the early mechanical axle + belt driven sytsem of air conditiong by "Pullman", some one found for me this: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/2193835.html

An August, 1959 Official Guide does not show a direct train from Memphis, Tenn. to Los Angeles, Ca.

Texas and Pacific Condensed Schedules show a connection:
Memphis-Little Rock MP 201
Little Rock-Texarkana MP 1
Texarkana-El Paso T&P 1
El Paso-Los Angeles SP 1 (Extra Fare)

There were through sleepers Memphis-Dallas-Ft. Worth and Dallas-Ft.Worth-Los Angeles. So you could ride through with one change of cars in the same train (T&P 1 at Dallas or Ft. Worth)

Phil Mulligan

Roads that adopted 'later' steam heating, including highly-efficient steam-ejector air conditioning, did so while lavish amounts of steam from locomotives were assumed to be 'cheap'. Note that relatively few used axle-generator 'recharged' heat pumps, with modern-style reversing valves, for both heat and cooling of conditioned air.

Steam became less of a 'cheap commodity' as higher pressures and the desire for better water treatment came in in the late '30s up through the '40s. The large 'installed base' of cars using steam heat dictated a continuation of the idea, especially in the early diesel years when substantial numbers of smaller gensets might have been necessary for trainlined heat. Early diesels did not have lots of surplus power for HEP...

Even as late as the first E60CPs there was enough 'legacy' steam-heat equipment to justify retaining steam generators in new-built power. That relatively soon came to an end once there was only 'one' operator of mainline LD trains. At present even axle-generated power is not legal on Amtrak (for fairly reasonable reasons!) and standardized 440V HEP is required.

Something interesting about Romania is the existence of Electro-Putere, whose name is a translation of Electro-Motive, and which used a logo highly reminiscent of the "GM" shield EMD used in the years just before WWII, with "EP" instead of "GM". It was never really surprising to me that the company had a leg up on diesel-electric manufacture even with the peculiarities of postwar government...

To my knowledge there was no 'through' train from Memphis to LA, although there was surely sleeper service. The closest thing to a through train would have been on the so-called 35th-Parallel route, which is now somewhat unaccountably torn up: it ran more or less straight west from Memphis through Amarillo on a reasonably direct-looking route. Likely this is one of those things that didn't quite navigate exciting robber-baron competition, like the various high-speed lines across Pennsylvania in the early part of the 20th Century. (Even the C&NYAL would likely have been an albatross in the long term if built out, as even 10-hour trains from New York to Chicago aren't really competitive with jets, and still too expensive to compete with cars...) Extending either the Gould-family or Sam Rea lines completely to the New York market (on the east) and from western Pennsylvania all the way to Chicago on the other would have been highly interesting ... in the absence of the Depression ... but it's a little scary to reflect on their current competitive value given the enormous amount of grading and tunnel maintenance they would require.

What is LD?
"Electro Putere" stands more for "Electro Power". In 1949, when the company was founded it started to produce transformers. Between 1954 and 1960 it manufactured streetcars (trams) and locomotives where produced only starting with 1959. Diesel-Electric locomotives. 060DA as they where known.
The factory did only small part of the locomotive. The engine and the bogies where made at Reşiţa (Reshitza).
Soviet dictator, Nikita Sergheevici Hruşchev (Kruschev) was furios that Romania started to manufacture Diesel-Electric locomotives using a capitalist licence and even furios that we made locomotives. I wonder if he hit the desk with his shoe after getting mad.
Electric locomotives (060EA) camed later, and for some years part of the compoments where imported. The last 060EA where manufactured in 1991. The 1990 and 1991 made ones have a smaller manufactured plate then the older one. In Romania you never known if that's really the original locomotive, because somtimes the body work was switched to another locomotive.
They wanted to made an electric multiple unit by installing equypment on passanger cars. It failed.
They made some locomotives with "A.L.Co." type engines (some I think even had original "A.L.Co." engines). More powerful then the 060DA (which is a 2,100 H.P. locomotive, originally didn't had electric heating generator), but they where a failure...
A company named "Softronic" whic resides in some of the buildings of "ElectroPutere" made 2 electric trains sets (orginally intented for export) and some modern electric locomotives using the old chassies. Plus modernizing electric locomotives. Some of the modern electric locomotives where exported to... Sweeden, which gave us the licence for the 060EA locomotives.
Intresting thing: the Swiss company that gave the licence for the electric parts of the 060DA Diesel Locomotive - I'm talking about the B.B.C. ("Brown, Boveri & Cie.") later merged with the company that gave the licence for the electric 060EA lcomotives ("A.S.E.A." was the company), to form "A.B.B." ("A.S.E.A. - Brown, Boveri").

Romania in parternship with "G.M." ugraded someb 060DA Diesel-Electric Locomotives. The uprgaed ones have a more masive body and they are square... plus they are know as Jimy/Jimmy (you can guess why).
The original 060DA are nicknamed Suzi/Suzy, after the "Sulzer" company that gave the licence for the Diesel engine.


In Romania, axle driven generators are no longer is use. For quite the same reasons. Some one sayed that there where cases when rods flew during the running of the train. Nasty thing at speeds like 62.5 miles per hour (100 kilometeres per hour) or above.
But I liked seeing the simphony of them.


"Missouri Pacific" seems to offer in 1960 a traind directly form Memphis to Los Angeles: https://streamlinermemories.info/South/MP60TT.pdf
But if you want to get sleep, you had to get down at Forth Worth, move into a coach for a very short time and then get onto another sleeping car at Dallas.
In 1957 "Rock Island Line" offered a train between Memphis and L.A., but no sleeping cars: http://streamlinermemories.info/RI/RI57TT.pdf
Or you could go from Memphis to Kansas City: https://www.flickr.com/photos/51992558@ ... 2/sizes/o/
see table 7: http://streamlinermemories.info/South/Frisco59TT.pdf
The "Kansas City - Florida Special" left Memphis Central Station at 7.15 P.M. (19.15) at arrived at Kansas City at 7.20 A.M. At 8.40 A.M. the "Golden State" was living for Los Angeles.
I searched for a route that avoid some of the South and found it.
Funy thing when I looked for a trains going to Los Angels I meet the "Golden State" and sayed that is the train and it was!
Good for me that I've searched the time table for Memhphis istfel in stad of searching every company... so I found out that I forget to search for "Frisco Lines"... I thought it was odd that not to be a train directly between Memphis and Kansas City in 1959.
I wanted that the train to leave from Union Station (demolished in 1969), but you can't have all.
Without the internet I don't know when I could find such a lot o info.
Now I need to find something about Memphis history... the neiberghoods, what where the Black areas, trolleyus routes.