Last week I found a video at the thrift store entitled Big Trains Rolling, distributed by Emson. It was brand new, still in plastic, and for 49 cents, I figured even if it were a baby movie or something, I wouldn't be out much. So I purchased it. Turns out to be a group of 4 short films for schoolchildren showing trains from the 50's. Very neat stuff if you can get past the announcer's voice and inane dialog. One of the films is absolutely fascinating. It was put out by the Pennsylvania RR and is entitled Progress on Rails. It shows the cutting edge (of the day) tech in use on the railroad. I had always thought in-cab signals were a recent development. Not so! the Pennsy had them on first generation diesels! There is also an interesting demonstration of the train's speed control, which automatically will stop the train if a change to a less favorable signal condition is detected but the engineer takes no action. A card-file and teletype equipped automated ticket booking machine is also shown, along with a shot of its electro-mechanical guts. What a complex bit of engineering that was! I am sure glad I'm not a tech who needs to figure out how to troubleshoot and repair that byzantine mess of wires and gizmos.
This wa a really cool find. It was fascinating to watch.
Joined: 2005-05-29