International Meridian Conference, 1884 - Indefatigable Sandford Fleming

Halifax, 1949

With the help of his CPR employee pass, LC Gagnon was travelling over the Canadian Pacific system - beginning in Montreal, through Maine and New Brunswick, and by CPR ferry to Nova Scotia ... with  additional travel on the CNR line along Nova Scotia's south shore (as seen elsewhere on this blog).

At the Halifax Citadel, he has composed a photo showing two time appliances. 

The noon gun will provide an audible signal for citizens within earshot. The time ball is more interesting. 

I believe LC Gagnon photographed two time balls in Halifax during this trip. Overlooking the harbour with a good line of sight, the ball pictured seems to be an official device. There was another time ball farther down the hill as well. Watchmakers often prided themselves as being masters of time and they maintained their own standard clocks ... and time balls in some cases. Exact time was provided as part of their professional mission. Before 'Standard Time', US railroads would sometimes designate a particular local watchmaker's time for official use.

Generally, the time balls descended slowly for a minute or less as the hour approached, with the end of the descent marking noon (or perhaps 13hr - after daily noon re-verification). Time balls were essential to shipping. Their signal was not subject to delay - compared to the non-instantaneous speed of the gun's sound. Using a telescope, a distant ship could check its chronometer with precision by watching a time ball.

... I believe the Admiralty maintained a series of time balls along the British coast to support civilian and Royal Navy ships. 

*  *  *

During, and at the conclusion of, the decisive International Meridian Conference at Washington DC in 1884, Sandford Fleming's biographers of 1915 and 2000 do not think he was properly recognized for his work to promote and support the adoption of a new system of time reckoning for the world. 

Lawrence Burpee (Sandford Fleming, Empire Builder; 1915; Oxford Press archive.org) ended his Standard Time Movement chapter with the words of the Astronomer Royal of Russia, M Otto Struve: 

'It is through Mr Fleming's indefatigable personal labours and writings that influential individuals and Scientific Societies and Institutes in America and Europe have been won over to the cause.' 

Looking over all of the microfilmed documents of Sandford Fleming preserved by the Canadian government (available at archive.org), I discovered that the official account of the Washington Conference is missing - although the official account translated into French is available. 

... Fleming's biographer of 2000 states that the US State Department was unable to find a French translator in Washington DC to satisfy the request of the delegation from France - it was Fleming who did. 

Fortunately, Project Gutenberg has preserved and uploaded the official record in English and you can read the whole thing at this link:

International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884.

*  *  *

A recap of Fleming's evolution of thought ...

If you've been following this series, you'll recall that Fleming was miffed because he was stuck at Bundoran, Ireland overnight because of a timetable misprint. His 5PM train was actually scheduled for 5AM the next morning.

In addition to advocating the use of a 24-hour clock, his first approach to the larger issue of world time reckoning was Utopian. He wanted to convert the 'hour numbers' (i.e. 1 to 12) on a clock to letters. This idea would require the engineering of a new clock device which took 24 hours for its hour hand to complete its trip around the watch face. The 24-hour cycle matched that of the earth. Essentially, the new timepiece was a schematic representation of world time zones, designated by their own letters.

Below, the whole world is shown at 'A' o'clock because the sun is over the 'A time zone' in eastern Russia. For those Russians, 'A hour' is always noon. For those in the N time zone in western Africa 'A' o'clock is always midnight. 

This seems odd, because we know how all this turned out ... but consider the global circumstances in the mid-1800s ...

... At that stage of history, a few smaller countries used nation-wide standard times because of railway or military imperatives. 

For example, in the UK, the railways all agreed to use Greenwich time - from the Royal Observatory - as the basis for all their schedules. After this change, people with the money to travel by rail set their watches to 'railway time'. The rest of society - if they had the money to buy their own personal watches or clocks - gradually followed suit.

... However, most places in the world using clocks set them by the sun at noon. There were no time zones - just local 'natural' time.

After the Washington International Meridian Conference of 1884 was over, Fleming put together a 110-page compendium of all of his time ideas, the responses to them, and their refinement ... for posterity. It is linked below if you want to see what he wanted us to remember about his persistent efforts. (It is the source of these 5 excerpts.)

archive.org link:

Universal or cosmic time: by Sandford Fleming, 

together with other papers, communications and reports

In the late 1870s ... Fleming 'worked through channels' in Canada, employing the Governor General (Queen Victoria's son-in-law) to help get the world thinking about time reckoning ... i.e. 'standard time and time zones'. 

As we've seen, experts like the UK Astronomer Royal - George Biddell Airy (at Greenwich) - were sometimes brusque when returning requested feedback. When appropriate, Fleming would modify his ideas. He'd continue to be patient and persistent in promoting them. 

Supportive colleagues like American meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who was necessarily interested in the science of measuring (Metrology), were natural allies of Fleming. As he built his network, Fleming presented his papers in the US and in Europe.

 

The advent of the world-wide telegraph system (before the invention of wireless) enabled information and time signals to be sent anywhere at the speed of light.

Having a universal standard time system and clearly-defined time zones would enable meteorologists like Cleveland Abbe to know exactly when a tornado had struck a particular settlement. Appropriate records could be made and warnings could be sent out by telegraph to other places which might soon be affected.

October 1884, the International Meridian Conference

The Americans take the bull by the horns ...

The first order of business was to elect a Chairman of the Conference ...

The delegates elected the chairman of the delegation of the United States of America, Admiral C. R. P. Rodgers. Almost all of his first brief address is reproduced here, taken from the Project Gutenberg document, linked above. It was concise and to the point.

'Gentlemen: I beg you to receive my thanks for the high honor you have conferred upon me in calling me, as the chairman of the delegation from the United States, to preside at this Congress. To it have come from widely-separated portions of the globe, delegates renowned in diplomacy and science, seeking to create a new accord among the nations by agreeing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world. Happy shall we be, if, throwing aside national preferences and inclinations, we seek only the common good of mankind, and gain for science and for commerce a prime meridian acceptable to all countries, and secured with the least possible inconvenience.

'Having this object at heart, the Government of the United States has invited all nations with which it has diplomatic relations to send delegates to a Congress to assemble at Washington to-day, to discuss the question I have indicated. The invitation has been graciously received, and we are here this morning to enter upon the agreeable duty assigned to us by our respective governments.

'Broad as is the area of the United States, covering a hundred degrees of longitude, extending from 66° 52' west from Greenwich to 166° 13' at our extreme limit in Alaska, not including the Aleutian Islands; traversed, as it is, by railway and telegraph lines, and dotted with observatories; long as is its sea coast, of more than twelve thousand miles; vast as must be its foreign and domestic commerce, its delegation to this Congress has no desire to urge that a prime meridian shall be found within its confines.

'In my own profession, that of a seaman, the embarrassment arising from the many prime meridians now in use is very conspicuous, and in the valuable interchange of longitudes by passing ships at sea, often difficult and hurried, sometimes only possible by figures written on a black-board, much confusion arises, and at times grave danger. In the use of charts, too, this trouble is also annoying, and to us who live upon the sea a common prime meridian will be a great advantage.'

As you'll see on Fleming's summary of the Conference, below, the delegations took over a month to conduct their 8 sitting days. There were breaks to allow for questions to be discussed with delegates' home governments and for data to be gathered and prepared for presentation. 

One key consideration was the use of the Greenwich Observatory/Meridian as longitude 'zero' and time 'zero' for the civil day of the world. As mentioned, Greenwich charts were widely used. Other nations had similar observatories providing the basis for their own charts. To choose Greenwich meant that these other observatories would not retain their national importance and tradition.

As a secret supporter of the Greenwich Meridian, Fleming wanted to avoid provoking other nations' anger by implying that their meridians were inferior in some way. To avoid this, right from the beginning of his work, he suggested his Proposed Common Prime Meridian in the middle of the Pacific Ocean ... as seen in the world diagram at the top of this post. 

At one point when the French delegates felt the relevance of the Paris Meridian was being lost, a vote was called on Fleming's anti-Prime Meridian and it was soundly defeated. So much for trying to be considerate ...

However, Fleming made the presentation below to show that the Greenwich Meridian did have the greatest use - as measured by tonnage and the absolute number of ships using the Greenwich charts. 

... Nonetheless, he points out, below, that his 'anti-Greenwich' meridian would avoid choosing the meridian of any particular nation. This is because the telegraph wires can provide the instantaneous propagation of an official time signal (from any observatory location to be chosen) to the entire world. 

The key holdouts in accepting the Greenwich Meridian - the French delegation - would abstain from voting in the end. Two people attended for France ... the world's leading spectroscopist ...  i.e. someone who breaks down the spectrum of a star's light to determine the elements of its composition ... and the French Ambassador to the United States. Astronomers are generally not called upon to fight in debates involving international diplomacy. 

Below is Sandford Fleming's concise report of what exactly was achieved at the International Meridian Conference at Washington DC in October 1884.

Any Canadian delegate, in the international sphere, would be regarded as coming from the British Empire at this point in history. In spite of all of his spadework to make a world time reckoning system reality, Fleming was forced to tag along with Britain. However, he was neither a military person, nor an academic, nor the member of a government, nor a diplomat. The British delegates tolerated his presence as kind of an oddity. There was no doubt that they would be campaigning to ensure the Greenwich Meridian was used.

The well-prepared naval astronomers generally had instructions from their governments to ensure the Greenwich Meridian was chosen as the Prime Meridian with the civil day beginning at midnight at that location. 

In the United States, William Frederick Allen (1846-1915), a civil engineer by training and the secretary of the General Time Convention of the American Railroad Association is generally cited as the inventor of standard time and [American] time zones. He had presented his system on 8 April 1883 at the ARA semi-annual meeting in St Louis. (As we've discussed, Fleming was pushing his papers back in the 1870s.)

Here is WF Allen on the cover of the December 1887 edition of the Official Guide. This old, brittle document prefers to be photographed. 

Allen attended the Washington Conference and the main thrust of his presentation was to affirm that the US railroad system was based on the Greenwich Meridian. The railroads had adopted his time zones in 1883. (Canadian railways had adopted the continental railroad standard at exactly the same time as the US railroads.) The railway time zones were optimized for railway operations. 

... If international time zones - separated by exactly 15 degrees - were overlaid on the railroad time zones, there was great potential for confusion. Official 'local time' should not be different from 'railroad time'.

If you haven't seen the ARA's original railroad time zone scheme, it is in a previous post, linked below.

Time Zones for Railways in North America

In the end, the international time zone system was implemented loosely, with local patterns of human activity considered. Over time, Allen's system was modified to better meet the needs of citizens. Everybody survived the experience.

*  *  *

What did Fleming get?

Fleming's Utopian 'lettered hour of the day' 24-hour-circle watch scheme fell by the wayside early in his work on this project. 

Today, UTC does provide a form of his Cosmopolitan or Cosmic Time for scientific, military, and general international use. 

However, if you turn on your TV or computer, you'll notice that much of humankind never did get around to learning how to tell the time using a 24-hour clock ... and no longer using AM or PM. This was seemingly the original frustrating issue which got Fleming thinking about time in the first place!

*  *  *

Where they 'make'  the Greenwich Meridian ...

Here is the specific wording from Resolution 2 of the International Meridian Conference, 1884.

" the meridian passing through the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich "

Here are two images which enable you to see this exact location, back around the time of Sandford Fleming and the Washington Conference.

from: Greenwich Observatory (article); 1872; Popular Science Review. archive.org

The image above shows and describes part of the process used around the time that Fleming began his work with standard time.

*  *  *

After Sandford Fleming was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1897, here is the building housing the transit.

The camera is sitting right on the Prime Meridian. 

The Royal Observatory Greenwich; E Walter Maunder; 1900; Religious Tract Society. archive.org

*  *  *

The system is available for use ...

The series of time zones, with Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, is presented in this British atlas from 1904. 

from: Handy Reference Atlas of the World; JG Bartholomew; 1904; John Walker & Co.

end

1881 - Sandford Fleming Rides in a Gondola

According to Pierre Berton, Sandford Fleming was accompanied by his daughter on his 1881 trip to Venice and they were riding gondolas along the Venetian canals. Although no photos exist of those events, please accept this facsimile from the same period in history. 

from: Gondola Days; F Hopkinson Smith; 1902; Charles Scribners & Sons. archive.org

As this post deals mainly with the paper Fleming presented in Venice, 

here are a couple of Fleming artifacts to help us imagine what he was like.

from: Sandford Fleming, Empire Builder; Lawrence J Burpee; 1915; Oxford.  archive.org

Fleming at age 18.

*  *  *

Men of Canada or Success by Example; William Cochrane; 1895; Bradley, Garretson & Co. archive.org

*  *  *

1881 - International Geographical Conference, Venice

With Fleming now paid-off from his Canadian Pacific work ... he devoted more time to his effective networking and strengths of persuasion ... in the furtherance of his mission to gain support for a worldwide system of time reckoning. As you'll see, he worked with diverse professions whose work would be made more effective with the implementation of time zones. 

Metrology is the science of measurement ... as opposed to meteorology. Both disciplines will appear together below. Having said that, Cleveland Abbe was a meteorologist working in the US who provided valuable advice and support for Fleming's efforts in Washington. 

As you can imagine, when Abbe was receiving weather observations from scattered centres across the US by telegraph, he needed some standard of time to accurately draw maps of isotherms and isobars. 

Imagine the current conditions back then: Some weather reporting stations used local solar time, some used the exact time used by the railroads. But ... US railroad time was often keyed to the particular railroad's distant 'head office' city's time. Many cities had central railway stations displaying standard clocks from these converging railways - each showing a different time. 

Without a common standard for local time at these distant telegraph reporting stations, (or even knowing which 'time' that day's observer had on their personal pocket watch) it was impossible to create accurate forecasts.

Fleming starts off by explaining how the various prime meridians (then in use) were significant to the national users when they were first established.

Greenwich was used the most because global navigation charts produced by Britain were used by the majority of world shipping (72% by tonnage). 

*  *  *

He mentions the instant worldwide communication brought about by the cable-linked global telegraph system. And he points out that every minute around the globe, there's a new meridian created where the sun stands directly overhead. 

Again, most 'westernized' cities were using their local solar noon for time reckoning.

In Fleming's world, there were also different civilizations which had their own timekeeping traditions.

In other writings, he gave examples of societies which start their 'days' at different times of the day. 

He explains that our 'civil day' spans 12 hours on each side of noon.

... However, some societies started their day at sunrise. China divided the day into 2-hour divisions. Japan divided the day into noon, sunset, midnight, sunrise. 

Western astronomers of that era would have preferred a 24-hour day beginning at noon - so a single session of overnight observations would not bear two dates -  one date before midnight and another date after midnight. (My spouse advises me this standard is still in place for her observation-reporting of variable stars - the reporting date for any part of the night is that of the previous noon.) 

Seafaring navigators also had this preference - to simplify their nightly comparisons of the night sky with their navigation tables which predicted where celestial bodies would be seen in 'local time' as they sailed the featureless oceans. 

Fortunately for a worldwide system, whatever their society's particular method for identifying 'the day', all societies share the 24 hour period of the earth's rotation. 

*  *  *

Fleming: 

Again, it's the new railway and telegraph systems which force us to confront these new effects!

... By the way ... did I ever tell you about the time I was once stuck overnight at Bundoran?

If you read my previous post about the adoption of US/Canada time zones for railroads in 1883 ... this paper, presented at Venice in 1881, was published two full years before that standardization was adopted and implemented. No doubt, Fleming's papers and networking influenced the general trend toward creating that continental system as well. 

... However, Fleming is usually not mentioned as 'an influencer' of standard time in American-based accounts of US railroad standard time zones. For example, the previously posted book account, or the 100th anniversary article of railway standard time in Trains.

*  *  *

Fleming:

By the way: I hate AM and PM ... you know ... from Bundoran.

The railways and the public deserve a better system!

*  *  *

Fleming presented a 20-point proposition in his Venice paper, listing practical characteristics of a time reckoning system which could be implemented in North America. It has the essential elements of the system of 24 time zones we are familiar with today. His original term for UTC or GMT or Zulu time was 'Cosmopolitan Time', later 'Cosmic Time' but the principle was the same. 

Fleming preferred letters, rather than names (eg. 'Eastern' time zone) to identify his time zones. To the yet-unchosen prime meridian, he assigned Z for zero, longitude, and 'Zulu time' (using the format 00:01 Z) is probably an enduring artifact of his thought on this matter.

... Fleming was well aware that there were other prime meridians drawn through nationally-significant points. He expected that strongly promoting Greenwich (as a citizen of the British Empire) for the 'world prime meridian' might provoke a reactive international rejection of everything he was working so hard to achieve.

Of course, he was a secret supporter of Greenwich. 

At that time, these were the observatories/locations where national or imperial time was set. 

• Royal Observatory Greenwich, London (UK)
• Paris Observatory (France) 
• Old Naval Observatory, Washington DC (USA) 
• Pulkova, Saint Petersburg (Russia) 
• San Fernando, Madrid (Spain) 
• Lisbon Observatory (Portugal) 
• Stockholm Observatory (Sweden), 
• Oslo Observatory, Christiana (Norway), 
• Monte Mario, Rome (Italy), 
• Imperial Observatory, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). 

As mentioned previously, a Prime Meridian is needed as 'Longitude Zero At Noon' so the sun's movement around the earth is deemed to start at some definite point each day.

*  *  *

If you need to save your brain ... skip this section ... 

However, Fleming's 9th point (of the 20 in his original 1881 paper for Venice) presents a brain-twister for us today. He proposed that Cosmopolitan Time (the planet's time, the standard to be used by worldwide telegraphy, astronomy, navigation, science ... and today, the military) would be the time between two passages of the sun over the prime meridian. 

So, taking our familiar example of today's Greenwich or UTC time or 'military time', 'the day' would start at 1200hr Z and end at 1200hr Z. 

The solution was obvious, Fleming's 9th point ... Fleming's 'anti-prime meridian' could be used! In the middle of the Pacific Ocean - on the opposite side of the earth from Greenwich - would be where the prime meridian would be located and the Zulu day would be calculated from 12hr to 12hr in the middle of the ocean. This would solve anticipated irreconcilable international resistance to using Greenwich, and a proper set of time zones could be set up. 

This would require an observatory somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, which would still be on some country's territory. But the new miracle of instantaneous telegraphy could supply the time signal to the whole globe when the sun was overhead in the Pacific Ocean. It would ensure that navigation charts could still be drawn up based on the Greenwich meridian, but it was 'impartial' because it would not give London the honour of hosting the Prime Meridian.  

* 

Today, of course, the prime meridian of UTC (with the sun theoretically overhead at 1200hr Z) defines when the date changes at night at the zigzag International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean - generally located at about 180 degrees. You know ... where the first fireworks are set off as New Year's Day advances around the globe.

... And when the sun stands over the International Dateline, London and Europe are changing the date at around midnight (0001 hr Z). 

... It has taken me a couple of weeks, on and off, to make sense of this proposal in the historical and political context of Fleming's period in history.

* end of brain twisting * 

*  *  *

Getting back to Fleming's 1881 paper for Venice. The version from which I have pulled key sections ... microfilmed by the Canadian government and preserved at archive.org ... is the paper which includes the modifications by the practical, supportive and non-political people and science professionals who attended that conference. This is what they ended up with ...

 Notice here that many of these signatories are practical and influential people 

from within the US government bureaucracy. 

The American navy had a significant interest in establishing a worldwide system to facilitate the operations of their fleet. 

Apparently, military civil engineers were quite focused and to the point in this and subsequent deliberations. Greenwich? Fine, let's make it work ... (Whereas, when France was later a voting member of the Washington conference in 1884, they abstained as the Paris Meridian could not die by their hand. National pride would not permit it.)

US President Chester Arthur was essential in inviting the delegates of the 'civilized nations' to the conclusive Washington deliberations on global time zones in October 1884 at the International Meridian Conference.

As you'll see, when some political delegates from Europe stalled and tried to indicate that they were not empowered to decide on a Prime Meridian, someone at the meeting pointed out that the President's letter specifically indicated that delegates 'would decide'. 

A link to the whole paper read in Venice in 1881 at archive.org

The Adoption of a Prime Meridian to Be Common to All Nations, 1881

To foreshadow the subsequent developments ... after the Venice conference, the next International Geographical Congress would be in Rome in 1883, with the ultimate decision being made for the westernized nations at the Washington DC, International Meridian Conference in 1884.

As I said, Cleveland Abbe, the meteorologist, was a great supporter of Fleming and his work ... After the Venice Congress was over, Fleming continued to work at this project. 

"Fleming, following Abbe's advice, immediately set to work with personal memos and speeches to American chambers of commerce, railroad conventions, and shipping and insurance companies, as well as with more formal approaches through the governor-general and the British Colonial Office."

passage from: Time Lord; Clark Blaise; 2000; Random House.

end

CPR Steam Snapshots - 4-6-4T, 4-4-0, Moosomin & McAdam

Oh, some interesting surprises always pop up during the course of research.

Some unknown collector acquired railway photos and glued the prints to 5x8-inch cards. Given the limited data available before the internet, the captions are sparse. I have included the original captions in quotation marks under the images.

To accurately obtain the equipment's building and scrapping dates, I consult Canadian Pacific Steam Locomotives; Omer Lavallee; 1985; Railfare. 

... It is necessary to go through all the concatenations of road numbers generated through the Canadian Pacific's three major numbering schemes for steam. Sometimes, the engines were even renumbered within one of those systems. 

And I always forget that the builder's serial number is the single best data point to use, to ensure that you haven't slid into the line of data for a completely different locomotive.

I can 'show my work', but I will not burden you with the intermediate road numbers used and their effective dates. 

*  *  *

First, we'll start with a couple of fast-in-both-directions tank engines. You should feel free to call them Forneys if you wish. 

"Montreal, 1896."

Built CPR New Shops, April 1893. Scrapped as 5990, September 1924.

"Shawbridge, Quebec, September 1921."

Built CPR Angus, February 1912. Scrapped February 1935.

"Field, British Columbia, 1886."

Built CPR New Shops, July 1886. Scrapped as 159, December 1929.

The display of the American flags is interesting.

Notice that wood was still in use as a fuel.

"Golden, British Columbia, 1936"

Built at CPR New Shops, June 1886. 

Above, you will recognize the number of the engine which pulled the first scheduled train into Vancouver on 23 May 1887. It was the 371 which led the first scheduled train coming from Montreal on its final leg into Port Moody on 4 July 1886. 

... As oil headlights were no longer being used in 1936, and the Randolph Scott movie Canadian Pacific was made in 1949 ... I did an image search in the hope that the 'event' in Golden would become apparent. 

Another CPR Movie

A movie was made in 1937 with the help of the CPR and the people of Revelstoke ... and at other locations. You can also witness a model train which sinks to the engine's running boards in 'muskeg'!

Like Canadian Pacific, the most someone could say is that the movie is 'based on actual events'. Silent Barriers is slightly closer to history, and being a British production, it is 'less Hollywood' in its approach. More CPR corporate history and lore was allowed to filter through into the final product. No doubt the 1949 movie producers referred to the 1937 film during their planning. 

'The Great Barrier' was the movie's original title ... pertaining to Major Rogers's last-minute [literally, the last 3 minutes] movie discovery of the pass through the Selkirks for $50,000!

... Perhaps pluralizing to Silent Barriers was intended to evoke both the mountain range PLUS some kind of melodramatic conflict ... labour versus management ... the national dream versus the obstacles to Canadian nation-building ... Van Horne versus Hill ... engineer versus conductor ... take your pick. 

Artistic Licence

The most fascinating triumph of story-telling over the vastness of Canada comes when Rogers Pass is discovered. At the exact moment when the pass is found, the railway will be saved: A telegram will be sent to Montreal and the pay car can finally be sent out to pay the striking, rioting, arsonist, murderous workers at End of Track - at the aptly-named 'Moodyville'. 

How is this miraculous discovery communicated? 

Simple: Rogers lights a fire at the pass, creating a pall of black smoke, it rises over the mountains and is seen at End of Track.  

The Making of ...

Through the miracle of the internet, I found an excellent presentation by the curator of the Revelstoke Museum and Archives which shows some of the treasury of photos taken at Revelstoke during the making of the movie. 

As someone who is interested in the preservation and interpretation of history (in this case, Revelstoke in the 1930s), I highly recommend the excellent presentation linked below. And there are many others to see via their YouTube account. If you choose to watch the movie, you'll see much more if you watch the museum presentation first. 

Silent Barriers, original title The Great Barrier (1937)

Silent Barriers, Revelstoke Museum & Archives presentation

Cathy English, Curator

Silent Barriers on YouTube

Cathy English mentions that 'they brought up another engine from Vancouver' (this was the 374). The image below is taken from a screen shot of her presentation. If you count the rivets, you'll see that the 522 is not the 374 renumbered. (To represent a whole railway roster, the CPR 136 was renumbered several times during The National Dream.)

from: Revelstoke Museum and Archives presentation.

Built by Manchester, New Hampshire, 1888. 

(CPR 522 - acquired from the New Brunswick Railway) 

Scrapped (officially as 143, Lavallee), October 1936 - after the movie's summer location work was finished.

Both engines are shown moving under steam power in the first few minutes of the film.

The last minute of the 1937 film features a contemporary motive power scene.

from: Revelstoke Museum and Archives presentation.

Worth their weight in publicity for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Another photo from the Revelstoke presentation.

from: Google Maps

The Revelstoke Museum and Archives in the former post office building.

*  *  *

"Vancouver, British Columbia, 1946."

Above, CPR 374 is probably decorated for the formal event of its presentation to the City. 

Below, as 374 originally appeared on display in the park at Kitsilano Beach.

You'll perhaps be interested in the locations of the air pump.

Originally, the pump for the 'new braking technology' was located on the engineer's side.

Later in history, it will find its permanent home on the fireman's side. 

No Caption.

*  *  *

"Moosomin, 1886, First scheduled run to Vancouver."

With the track curving behind the train, you can see a wind-driven pump for the water tower.

The large crowd on the station platform suggests a special event.

Lightening the photo reveals a man wearing a tie right beside the cab.

In a dress uniform, we see a member of a military unit or a member of the North-West Mounted Police.

*  *  * 

"McAdam, before 1904."

An image identical to the one above appears on the internet - it is printed as dark as my image was originally. However, my photo has an odd rectangular printing artifact at the third storey of the tower. 

The camera seems to be perched on a shop building. 

In the foreground, left to right, are spare wheels and a jacked up tender water tank. Another tender is having its wooden parts renewed. To its right is another tender for the 631 - loaded with wood and which might just have a link and pin coupler. A triangular locomotive pilot is tipped up in front of the fountain. 

In front of the unique caboose (I can't read the print) at the right margin is a car labelled 'CPR' and possibly 'post car'. This guess would be supported by its relatively small door and small windows intended to admit light for work and never people.

The building in the centre has 'railway character' and it may have belonged to a railway subsequently acquired by the CPR - perhaps the New Brunswick and Canada. Its tall guyed 'mast' is quite an interesting feature.

Initially, the Maine Central approached from the west ... and became the St John and Maine at the Canadian border and as it left McAdam on its way east to Saint John.

The New Brunswick and Canada Railway passed through McAdam on its north-south alignment.

I think the CPR had effective corporate control of these lines by 1890.

My guess is that the main east-west (or vice versa) line is seen at the left margin (i.e. part of the CPR 'Short Line' across Maine). However, I don't want to guess on the compass alignment of anything in the photo.

That is probably a four-storey heated water tower. Behind the coach and caboose to the tower's right is probably an interlocking tower and a station with perhaps a divisional headquarters. Or perhaps part of the complex is a hotel. The well-known McAdam station which survives today incorporated a hotel into its design. 

Main line passengers travelling to and from the CPR resort at St Andrews, New Brunswick might have justified a high-quality railway hotel being located at this junction.

*  *  *

from: Railway and Canal Maps of Canada; 1904; Government of Canada. archive.org

The map above shows the general arrangement of railways here circa 1900.

To add to the fun, I have included McAdam-related pages from an employee timetable from the same era.

source: archive.org

end

Ezra Miller Saved Lives

Sixty-four passengers were killed on the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Mud Run station, Kidder Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania at 2002hr on 10 October 1888, when the Seventh Section (powered by two engines) ran into the stopped Sixth Section of an excursion special.

... with those details, once we're done here we can take off and check out the disaster on Wikipedia, Google maps, and other on-line references! But beware, there is more than one Mud Run in Pennsylvania!

By the sounds of it, the train order office was being used as a block signal to maintain the ordered 10 minute spacing between sections. The sunset there at that time of year is 1830hr - so it would have been good and dark in the forest in the valley. As you might expect, there were problems with rules observance pertaining to the train order signal ... the flagman failed to go out the prescribed distance to flag ... and so on ...

But that's not the point of this post, it's this frequently-reproduced photograph ...

from: History of Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1975; Random House.

The engineering of passenger cars in that very early period of railroad technology had resulted in the invention of the Miller Hook system - two decades earlier - which had been invented to help prevent tragedies such as this.

from: Mr Pullman's Elegant Palace Car; Lucius Beebe; 1961; Doubleday & Co.

Above, is a drawing from circa 1870 or so, representing contemporary passenger car architecture or engineering. 

'Architecture' was probably a better description because passenger coaches were generally built like wooden sheds with windows on wheels. Coaches were not engineered to mitigate buff (compressive) forces - particularly during collisions. 

In terms of passenger comfort, it looks as if this car has a link-and-pin coupling system which would 'accordion' the train consist in or out whenever there was a change in train dynamics. For example, when starting or stopping, with a careless engineer, there could be a jolting change in coupler slack, particularly in the second half of the train. 

(I enjoyed standing and working on hay wagons in high school. A hay wagon was coupled to the tractor using a single pin. This link-and-pin passenger train jolt would have been quite an experience, particularly if a passenger was standing at the time.)

The end sill (at floor level) is set at a different level than the coupler. This is normal today. However, this design does not seem to employ a strong metal fabrication which combines the end sill AND the coupler.  

... If strong buff forces from a colliding engine were applied to the back of this car at the end of a stationary train ... you can imagine that the 'wooden shed' would be easily separated from any metal structures attached to the bottom of its wooden floor. 

... The front of the stationary train would have significant inertia, so the 'back wooden shed' and the 'next wooden shed' would become the 'crumple zones' which absorbed the shock of the collision. 

Whether or not the cars interact 'perfectly' like a telescope is not particularly the issue - it is the fact that the wooden passenger compartment is not engineered to protect the people inside.

from: Train Wrecks; Robert C Reed; 1968; Superior Publishing.

Here is a little historical background on the issue of link-and-pin couplers

from: Railroad Album; John O'Connell; 1954; Popular Mechanics.

from: Yonder Comes the Train; Lance Phillips; 1965; AS Barnes & Co.

Above, is a display model of a Miller Hook from above or below. 

You can see the model drawbar is anchored by slot screws.

This is a pretty rough image in the book.

 

The model shows how two couplers would automatically couple.

The worker would avoid the link-and-pin danger associated with standing between the coupling cars. 

They would not have to manually insert the link into the stationary pocket and drop the pin to secure it.

The model also shows how a cut lever would be used to uncouple, 

by pulling one of the hooks toward the side of the car.

*  *  *

from: Cars, Their Construction, Handling & Supervision; Marshall M Kirkman; 1908; World Railway Publishing Co.
Note: The following 'aged paper' images also come from this publication.

The exhaustively-labelled diagram, above, identifies item 319 as a Miller Hook. 

Like early Janney-style couplers this one has 'backward compatibility' ... 

A link can be inserted in the 'knuckle cutaway', and a pin dropped into the hook.

(The diagram shows a standard Janney-style coupler on the other end of the car.)

*  *  *

On breaks, while writing this, I was skimming the minutes of a session of the US Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce from 1892. It dispels any idea that we had link-and-pin, then we changed to Janney-style, and we all lived happily ever after.

In his testimony, the AAR representative indicates that their member railroads have converted 20% of their freight equipment to 'automatic' couplers. The AAR represents something like 2/3 of the US route miles. I assume the rest of the miles were not 'interstate' railroads or these railroads elected to be otherwise outside of the AAR. The AAR says ... Don't legislate, many of our members are doing well with their conversion. 

The switchman-representative of the body which provides benevolent disability insurance to injured switchmen says Lehigh Valley 'hook-and-link' (maybe a European design import) is his preference. Link-and-pin are pretty good if you know what you're doing. Automatic couplers are a mess. There are hundreds of different patent designs of 'knuckle couplers'. You can wreck yourself lining the drawbar up for a coupling. The cut rod can snag on your coat and drag you along. When we have problems with different patents being incompatible, we resort to link-and-pin to couple them. So there! The railroad officials who call the shots 'wouldn't do our job for $100 a minute'.

So, considering all of this in 1892, you can understand why lives were lost between the invention of the Miller Hook (1869), the Janney-type (1868) and their universal adoption on all interchanged railcars. 

Delaying factors included ... the inertia of large companies with massive investments in diverse rolling stock ... the cautious views of their association which doesn't represent all of the railroads anyway ... the conflicting evidence from the workers (including the significant disability and death statistics) ... and the reluctance of legislators to become very unpopular, by dictating a standard which all parties condemn. 

To some extent, some of the parties are looking expectantly to the Master Car Builders to declare a preferred standard for Janney-style couplers.

And, as a reminder, the Mud Run disaster occurred in 1888.

*  *  *

We continue with technical details and illustrations from The Science of Railways (1908) ...

MCB stands for Master Car Builders

Above: I believe this is the Miller Hook as seen from below the car.

Above: I believe this is the Miller Hook as seen from above the car.

*  *  *

In the second paragraph below, 'hool' is hook - it's not some Gaelic or Olde English railroadin' talk.

The upper diagram above shows a 'phantom' pin inserted into the hook (backward compatibility).

The lower diagram above shows a cross-section view.

The coupler/drawbar is the piece protruding at the left, a spring loaded buffer appears above it at the 'sill' (floor) level.

*  *  *

Sometimes, a second reference helps clarify complex diagrams and concepts ...

from: Train Wrecks; Robert C Reed; 1968; Superior Publishing.

There is a small community of us which believes that the flying switches ... made with three-coach consists ... performed by Forneys in suburban commuter service at Dorval, Quebec ... in the late 1950s ... are unique and fascinating. However, Advantage 9, above, is bragging that you can kick coaches all day long if they are fitted with Miller Hooks. Just heave the big bar over to release the hook on the fly.

At the US Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, the switchman-representative of the benevolent insurance organization said that Miller Platforms were a problem with some of the sharper curves in the yard. He stated that an interim joint must be made with link-and-pin in that case.

... He went on to say that passenger cars are switched very gently to avoid damage, including breaking glass ... long before safety glass, we assume ... Add glass to the list of safety features taken for granted today. 

... Considering his freight car specialty (in contrast to passenger car switching) he gives a very thorough description of the 'human experience' of being a switchman. He said that freight cars get very rough treatment. There is great pressure to switch a high volume of cars quickly with hazardous footing ('dirt') in the yards and usually with inadequate resources. He points out the difficulty of operating at night with an oil lantern. And ... he says that freight cars often come together at speeds ... up to 10 to 12 miles per hour (!!). 

*  *  *

Some photos of Miller Hooks/Platforms

I had always wondered what 'that big bar' on the rear platform of some observation and private cars did. 

From my image search in my own books, it turns out that old coach photos often have their couplers cropped away during photo layout editing. Visible couplers in photos are often lost in the dark end-of-car murk, making them unhelpful as crisp illustrations of Miller Hooks. And no one putting a book together is particularly interested in showing a detailed rear view of a plain coach. 

There were no Miller Hooks to be seen in the core fleets of Canada's major railways, as far as I could see - just on the odd imported car. As we've just heard, these imports can be temporarily coupled using link-and-pin technology. 

You can imagine that many American roads in the business of hauling long passenger trains in dense urban corridors would have chosen Miller Hooks and Platforms for their obvious advantages. My guess from my image search is that Canadian passenger equipment probably skipped a generation of technology and went directly from link and pin to a suitable Janney-type. 

From an American perspective, British railways were believed to have been relatively free from coach telescoping in the late 1800s because of their own slack-controlling couplings which featured the familiar buffers to keep the couplings under tension. With the Grand Trunk and the CPR British Empire affinity, one might speculate that rough slack action and coach telescoping risk resulted in quick adoption of the Janney-type.

Given what we'll see below, I checked Van Horne's car at Craigellachie (the photo with his son driving his own last spike) and his car had a link-and-pin coupler pocket.

The clearest surviving photos of Miller Hooks and Platforms I have found are in books showing business and observation cars. Unfortunately, they were not always photographed plumb, but we'll take what we can get.

from: Mr Pullman's Elegant Palace Car; Lucius Beebe; 1961; Doubleday & Co.

An unidentified car in an undated image.

from: Mr Pullman's Elegant Palace Car; Lucius Beebe; 1961; Doubleday & Co.

The car above was used on the Boston & Lowell Railroad in the 1870s.

In this case, it seems the desire for symmetry caused the large telltale lever to be replaced with a handwheel which matched the handbrake handwheel.

from: Mansions on Rails; Lucius Beebe; 1959; Howell-North Press.

Burlington, Number 200, La Rabida, was the private car used by railroad president Charles Elliott Perkins from 1881 to 1901.

This was the nicest photo I could find to illustrate a Miller Hook and Platform.