Sunday, May 30, 2021
Train songs reprint and add
Reprint from a couple years ago.
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As I make these models of Box Depots and related equipment, I'm learning about the equipment. The mail crane was a remarkable font of wasted creativity. Hundreds of inventors patented improved versions, but the original version was vested and amortized in equipment cost and mail-clerk skills, so it stayed.
I chose one of the unused patents because it struck me as especially elegant, and because the patent had a nice clear schematic.
Another bit of learning: Water tanks were simple machines with no particular variation... but real variation sprang up around them, along with grass and trees. This one has a simple float-based 'flag' indicating its level, so an engineer could decide at a sufficient distance whether it was worth stopping here vs the risk of making it to the next tank. The more prosperous railroads installed automatic detectors that signaled the nearest telegraph office when the inlet pump failed or the level was too low. The telegraph office could then send a message to the appropriate train dispatcher. Morsenet of Things.
The Pennsylvania RR developed an in-flight rewatering system for its fast expresses. A quarter-mile long trough was sunk between the rails, kept filled from a nearby tank. When an engineer needed water, he dropped a scoop-pipe into the trough, and the speed forced the water up into the engine's reservoir.
Here's a tender (water tank behind loco) with the scoop in dropped position. The lever mechanism is fairly simple and obvious on the diagram. Fancier versions powered the drop from the compressed air in the air-brake system.
I'm also trying to implement my earlier decision to resume humming and singing while I work, a habit that I abandoned many years ago. As I make these models, I end up humming train-related songs. Chattanooga Choochoo, Sentimental Journey.
To a first approximation, travel songs are train songs. We don't have many popular songs about traveling in other vehicles. Early rock-n-roll gave us plenty of car songs, but they're about racing or tragic crashes. None of them are about road trips. I can only think of one song about traveling in a jet plane.
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Added: Here's an unexpected train song. MacHarrie explained it in an episode of 'Can You Imagine That'. The composer was taking a train trip to visit his girlfriend in Hiawatha, Iowa. He wrote a train song about the trip and the girl, but later decided to change the words into fake Injun form. Nevertheless, the music is pure train, complete with Doppler whistles!
The song itself, extracted from the episode by the Youtube channel that specializes in the Transco Chorale:
Incidentally, this pronunciation of Hiawatha was standard and universal before 1950. The first syllable switched from /hi/ to /haɪ/ after WW2, along with several other words and grammatical forms.
Another bit of learning: Water tanks were simple machines with no particular variation... but real variation sprang up around them, along with grass and trees. This one has a simple float-based 'flag' indicating its level, so an engineer could decide at a sufficient distance whether it was worth stopping here vs the risk of making it to the next tank. The more prosperous railroads installed automatic detectors that signaled the nearest telegraph office when the inlet pump failed or the level was too low. The telegraph office could then send a message to the appropriate train dispatcher. Morsenet of Things.
The Pennsylvania RR developed an in-flight rewatering system for its fast expresses. A quarter-mile long trough was sunk between the rails, kept filled from a nearby tank. When an engineer needed water, he dropped a scoop-pipe into the trough, and the speed forced the water up into the engine's reservoir.
Here's a tender (water tank behind loco) with the scoop in dropped position. The lever mechanism is fairly simple and obvious on the diagram. Fancier versions powered the drop from the compressed air in the air-brake system.
I'm also trying to implement my earlier decision to resume humming and singing while I work, a habit that I abandoned many years ago. As I make these models, I end up humming train-related songs. Chattanooga Choochoo, Sentimental Journey.
To a first approximation, travel songs are train songs. We don't have many popular songs about traveling in other vehicles. Early rock-n-roll gave us plenty of car songs, but they're about racing or tragic crashes. None of them are about road trips. I can only think of one song about traveling in a jet plane.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
Added: Here's an unexpected train song. MacHarrie explained it in an episode of 'Can You Imagine That'. The composer was taking a train trip to visit his girlfriend in Hiawatha, Iowa. He wrote a train song about the trip and the girl, but later decided to change the words into fake Injun form. Nevertheless, the music is pure train, complete with Doppler whistles!
The song itself, extracted from the episode by the Youtube channel that specializes in the Transco Chorale:
Incidentally, this pronunciation of Hiawatha was standard and universal before 1950. The first syllable switched from /hi/ to /haɪ/ after WW2, along with several other words and grammatical forms.Labels: Entertainment, Language update
¶ 10:42 PM
