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

Sandford Fleming & Time Zones - Stuck Overnight at Bundoran in 1876!

Spot the points of ignorance displayed by a brilliant mathematician and astronomer. 

This comment was returned by Sir George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal (he held this office: 1835-1881), Greenwich, 18 June 1879 ... regarding one of Fleming's papers from 1878-79 which had been forwarded via the Governor General (Marquis of Lorne) to the British government for distribution and comment. 

In particular, look at his suggestion regarding schedules and timekeeping for transcontinental trains in the United States.

A train leaves New York using local solar time. 

Another train leaves San Francisco using local solar time. 

A dispatcher writes a meet order. 

Where will the two trains collide?

This was not Airy's only railway-related error!

Astronomer Royal Airy was consulted by the North British Railway to calculate the wind pressures to be expected on the Tay Bridge. He calculated a maximum wind pressure of 10 pounds per square foot which was much lower than that produced during severe storms. 

In fact, 56 pounds per square foot later became the assumed maximum pressure ... before that value was multiplied by 4 to provide a design margin of safety. 

Myriad miscalculations and errors by many contributors led to the Tay Bridge Disaster on 28 December 1879. It occurred six months after Airy's comments on Fleming's paper (above) .

In spite of this kind of negative feedback, Fleming persisted in his efforts. 

*  *  *

There are a number of postcards on the internet showing an early version of the small Bundoran, Ireland station. It was probably in that building where Sandford Fleming resolved (overnight) to do something about the way time was being reckoned. Everywhere.

Fleming's biographies from 1915 and 2000 both spell the town 'Bandoran' but I've found no evidence anywhere that it was ever spelled that way. Perhaps Fleming misspelled it in his notebook at the time. 

So let's look at a map to better understand the incident which contributed to Fleming's devotion to networking and campaigning ... to establish in the imperial and western world ... a new system of time zones.

This post looks at the details of Fleming's trip, and also excerpts from his first paper on the subject.

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

An image of Fleming (1827-1915) 16 years before his determination to change time.

The author of his (2000) biography stated that Fleming essentially dictated his 1915 biography to the writer.

*  *  *

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

If you find Londonderry at the top of the map, Enniskillen and Bundoran Jct are to its south. If you head for the west coast, you'll find Bundoran. These were the geographical limits of his trip in the story below.

*  *  *

From his 1915 biography, here is the story of his overnight stranding in a small country station.

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

Below is a Bianconi car, also known as a public car. 

from: Charles Bianconi, a biography; 1786-1875; Mrs Morgan O'Connell (his daughter); Chapman & Hall. archive.org

For a former surveyor, and someone who had just travelled 'Ocean to Ocean' in 1872, travelling by public car would not have been a great hardship.

from: Citizen's Atlas of the World; John Bartholomew; 1924; Geographical Institute, Edinburgh.

On the (1924) map above ...

• Londonderry is in the top right corner. 
• Enniskillen (60 miles by rail) is near the centre, bottom. 
• Manor Hamilton (30 miles by public car) is at the bottom, near the west coast and Sligo. 
• Killennumery (8 miles by private carriage) exists only as a cemetery today and is not shown on the map above. It was southeast of Manor Hamilton. 

Almost 50 years later (the publishing date of map above) there was no direct railway connection along the route that Fleming took northbound, Killennumery to Bundoran. 

Bundoran is at the first bit of pink on the west coast. With the low mountains, at least his late-afternoon horse-drawn trip would have been scenic. In some ways it reminds me of the hill topography around Lake Superior.

*  *  *

If Fleming had travelled 18 years later, he would have found a luxury railway hotel at Bundoran in which to ruminate - instead of a small stone station building.

from: Picturesque Donegal; 1908; Great Northern Railway (Ireland).

Opened in 1894, the hotel was designed by the railway company's architect Thomas Drew, and constructed entirely of concrete - instead of wood - to better survive the humid climate. Bundoran was styled as the 'The Brighton of Ireland'. 

The hotel still exists today - nicely-restored and maintained. See: The Great Northern Hotel.

The railway line was originally built as the Enniskillen and Bundoran in 1866. The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) took over and began operating the line in 1876. 

Perhaps the change of management/new listing led to some problem with the printing of the departure times - the corporate takeover happening the same year in which Fleming travelled.

As the bare minimum, in 1876 Fleming had hoped that humans could develop the capacity to use a 24-hour clock rather than the AM/PM 12 hour clock ...

*  *  *

July 1922: Almost nothing has changed! 

from: Bradshaw's Railway Guide; July 1922; Henry Blacklock & Co (reprint)

Above are the mainline trains. 'Weekdays' during this era were Monday-Saturday.

AM and PM are marked as mrn or aft, respectively. In one case I noticed on another page - where an entire schedule was completed during the 'noon hour' - the abbreviation non is used.

The particular listing which Fleming would have used: Bundoran has trains departing for Londonderry (left half of the sheet, read down) 630 mrn, 1125 mrn, and 530 aft. (Generally, trains were 'Up' toward a major city or capital ... or 'Down' from a major city or capital. I assume that Dublin was the important city in this case.)

... We can imagine that Fleming would be quite discouraged, after his 1876 experience, to see that the world still had not learned to write/read his train times as 0630, 1125 and 1730 to avoid confusion and errors. 

*  *  *

Below For the sake of local history, here are the 'all stops locals' between Bundoran Junction and Bundoran with abridged timetables showing only main cities. 

from: Bradshaw's Railway Guide; July 1922; Henry Blacklock & Co (reprint)

screencap from: The Great Northern Railway (Ireland); Edward Patterson; 1962, 2003; Oakwood Press. archive.org

Above: The improved Bundoran station offered a trainshed to protect the affluent Great Northern passengers drawn to the resort. There is a 'Station Road' in Bundoran today but no trace of the railway line or its buildings that I could find.

The station building was located where the library and local council offices now stand. The government of Northern Ireland cut off the sections of railway which crossed the border on 1 October 1957. The station was demolished after this change.

*  *  *

The Railways Lead the Way

As would happen in North America, the railway system of Britain began using standard time ...

Most British railways had adopted Greenwich Mean Time as their standard by 1848. 

As a result, the general public began to follow this standard. 

The Royal Observatory began broadcasting time signals by telegraph in 1852. 

GMT was legally recognized as the standard time for Britain in 1880.

*  *  *

Was Fleming Driven Mad at Bundoran?

Looking at short excerpts from Fleming's first paper on time ...

1876: His first paper is produced and circulated privately among selected colleagues 

... to avoid any in-public pranging of his novel system.

Here is some interesting Canadian history ...

(It's always been about 'you', Toronto!)

To people accustomed to a 'GMT' standard, or UTC, or 'military time' or Zulu time, the model is not hard to imagine. Fleming tries to avoid the appearance of favouritism by not anchoring his prime meridian to Britain at Greenwich. There were 11 or so other prime meridians used by other countries at the time and he was aware that too much nationalism would defeat the whole effort to develop a worldwide standard. 

Fleming's hour hand provides travellers, etc, with a graphic representation of the sun's apparent motion around the earth. So people constantly moving or thinking about different time zones could purchase a 24-hour chronometer which would key to the appropriate time zone. 

Although ... someone would have to engineer that new 24-hour timepiece.

On a few occasions, I attempted to fully understand the table above. There are perhaps some local idiosyncrasies of their historical local British time at the top of the chart? You get the general idea, at least.

Fleming is kind of struggling with a way to graphically portray the concept he is thinking of. As you'll see, his subsequent papers are less concerned about over-engineered physical technology. 

Instead, his ideas find support from other diverse professions which are also experiencing difficulties created by fast, modern worldwide telegraphic and railroad connectedness. 

In contrast, the reckoning of time had never slipped into its sandals and walked away from the high noon shadow on a sundial.

A link to the whole paper at archive.org

Terrestrial Time - A Memoir

The Evolution of Rules 1, 2, 3 and Times

Traditionally, having the correct time out on the road meant that you would avoid a faceful of freight train.

Consider the march of technology. A local newspaper columnist once wrote about the traffic radar equipment being introduced in the City of Kingston. In the past, a speeder could reportedly beat a speeding ticket if it could be demonstrated in court that the police officer had not calibrated the radar set with the supplied tuning fork before beginning work that day.

'Forget it. They use this new radar to calibrate the tuning forks.'

*  *  *

It seems that the railway rule books are usually a couple of decades out of date with cutting-edge reality. Historically, railways were often profitable and safe because of their tendency to be conservative. 

This online portion of the CROR (2015) currently (2021) states:

Every conductor, assistant conductor, locomotive engineer, pilot, foreman, snow plow foreman and such other employees as the company may direct, shall, when on duty, use a reliable watch that indicates hours, minutes and seconds and shall;

(i) be responsible to ensure that it is kept in proper working condition so that it does not reflect a variation of more than 30 seconds in a 24 hour period;

(ii) set it to reflect the correct time if it reflects a variation of more than 30 seconds;

(iii) before commencing work, compare the time on their watch with a railway approved time source. Where a railway approved time source is not accessible, obtain the correct time from the RTC or by comparing with another employee who has obtained the correct time. Every crew member assigned to train, transfer or yard service shall compare the time with one another as soon as possible after commencing work.

*  *  *

While every employee is held individually responsible for always having the correct time, one wonders if the prescribed personal timepiece is actually the least reliable source of railway time within a fusee's throw of the locomotive - given all the GPSed electronic telemetric gadgetry therein.

By the same token, employees flagging the headend of a steam-powered train (with the fire therein always threatening to melt the steel around it), ironically, were required to have matches.

Obviously, when one is 'all alone' out in a snowstorm, one must know the correct time, or be able to light a kerosene flagging lantern without using the locomotive's resources. You are individually responsible. You and your crew will also be held collectively responsible. 

*  *  *

I am interested in the concept of time(s). Like many of you, I also enjoy reading old rulebooks and timetables as they allow me to imagine other (probably idealized) periods in railway history. Very small settlements like Schreiber, Ontario once had prosperous watchmaker shops to supply, and to regularly inspect and regulate, the timepieces of all the local running trades personnel and other employees affected by the rules. 

... So what could be better than a 'history book' of the time rules which was designed to provide the 'bureaucratic memory' to the AAR and its members?

This little old book is about 4 inches x 6 inches x 1.6 inches thick and does not like to be scanned.

... pardon my gutters.

[above: not exceed 30 seconds per week - not merely 30 seconds in 24 hours cf 2015 CROR]

The 'current rules' (1940) and Page 20 (referred to above) follow ...

*  *  *

Moving on from rule book time, to time(s) ...

One period of railway history which I find particularly interesting is the nightmare period before railways and railroads began to standardize their individual or collective times ... and before national time zones were established across continents. 

... Solar time was 'our city's time' or 'God's time' ... and it stood preeminent. If you had an actual appointment (rather than a simple 'walk-in and wait'), the city's chiming clock towers could guide your temporal journey to the public building or private office ... where you'd find the affluent professionals, their fancy clocks and watches, and their 'time is money' ethic. 

... Church bells and other calls to worship were also intended to regulate people's temporal journeys back then ... but I digress.

Consider the march of technology. Society required more and more people to be able to tell time from a 12-hour clock face. People became more educated and affluent. People travelled longer distances away from their homes via faster and faster railway networks. 

... People began to notice that their personal timepieces were matching neither the position of the sun, nor the carefully-kept local solar time at the settlements where they detrained ...

And don't even get Sandford Fleming started on railways using only a 12 hour clock!

Did you spot the 5 Canadian cities?

*  *  *

To travel farther through the looking glass of North American railways during the era of local solar time, up trains, down trains, noon guns, and time balls ... perhaps try this earlier post ...

Canadian Railways - Public Timetables from 1874

*  *  *

from: GWR Company Servants: Janet KL Russell; 1983; Wild Swan Publications.

Finally, on the Great Western Railway (UK), here is an undated view of a watchmaker within its little shop of horologists. With all the mechanical time-keeping machines located throughout the GWR's dense little railway system, it made sense to have a centralized staff of experts to repair and oversee their use.

Prince Edward Island Railway, items from 1874 to 1925

from: unknown North American railway/steamship guide; circa 1874.

The beginning of Prince Edward Island's railway is shown on the map above. The first three images come from a very distressed copy of a publication similar to the Official Guide which was published in 1874 - the year after Prince Edward Island joined Canadian Confederation. 

Like some of the other documents reproduced here, it dislikes being crushed into the scanner glass so some areas lack a perfect focus. Except for the first, all images are sized to 1200 pixels, but Google has a funny way of handling them so their width is not uniform.

The following image shows the first surviving page of this document and it contains the only surviving reference to transportation to, or on, Prince Edward Island. 

from: unknown North American railway/steamship guide; circa 1874.

from: unknown North American railway/steamship guide; circa 1874.

While Greenwich Time became Britain's 'standard time' in 1854, a few years after its railways began to use one standard time ... it wasn't until 1883 that North American railways began to use standard one-hour time zones across the continent - hello there, Sandford Fleming! Canada's most eastern time zone at that point was known as 'Intercolonial'.

As the image above dates from 1874, the traveller's time wheel with its local solar times appears. The railway, of course, was the first invention which really gave ordinary people the need to coordinate their times over large geographical areas.

*  *  *

Leaving 1874, the following pages come from a 1915 Canadian government publication which provided - to any who would need them - the altitudes calculated across Canada. As railways were the single largest source of surveyed elevations above sea level at this point, this data offers some historical insights into the early railways constructed in Canada.

from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation Canada.

from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation Canada.

from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation Canada.

*  *  *

The next set of images come from a report to the Canadian Parliament. Because part of Prince Edward Island's bargain with Canada was that the Dominion would assume responsibility for PEI's railway, its officials had a reporting responsibility to the Minister of Railways and Canals, and Parliament. 

... So operating details became part of the nation's archives ... rather than private property which needed to be microfilmed and/or burned because it occupied valuable office space and was of no further use to the company.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

Errors and Omissions Excepted - this is a fancy accounting version of 'CYA' - cover your accountant.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

The most colourful and historically interesting report is saved for last.

Plenty of  enjoyable historical interpretation could be done to thoroughly explain these old practices. 

The railway provided transportation and employment.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

While it is entirely possible that my knowledge of historical geography is 'off'' ... 

it seems that CNR Headquarters could be accused of showing some ignorance of local conditions ...

from: Scenic Canada; 1925; Canadian National Railways.

(the provincial port names are reversed)