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Marking 125 Years Since the Great Gauge Change
Arnold Reinhold writes "This month ends with the 125th anniversary of one of the most remarkable achievements in technology history. Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 1886, the railroad network in the southern United States was converted from a five-foot gauge to one compatible with the slightly narrower gauge used in the US North, now know as standard gauge. The shift was meticulously planned and executed. It required one side of every track to be moved three inches closer to the other. All wheel sets had to be adjusted as well. Some minor track and rolling stock was sensibly deferred until later, but by Wednesday the South's 11,500 mile rail network was back in business and able to exchange rail cars with the North. Other countries are still struggling with incompatible rail gauges. Australia still has three. Most of Europe runs on standard gauge, but Russia uses essentially the same five foot gauge as the old South and Spain and Portugal use an even broader gauge. India has a multi-year Project Unigauge, aimed at converting its narrow gauge lines to the subcontinent's five foot six inch standard."
In the second half of the 19th century the US took rail transit very seriously. The standardization of the gauge isn't the only example of this. The US also spent a large amount of effort building the transcontinental railroad. A major reason for the success of the United States in the 20th century was the massive investment in infrastructure in the end of the 19th. Unfortunately, the US hasn't done much in the way of large scale infrastructural improvement since the building of the highway system in the 1950s. Our electric grid is primitive and outdated and our fastest passenger trains like the Acela high speed rail on the East Coast are slower than regular trains in other places like Japan (the maximum speed of the Acela is less than the average speed for some of the Japanese trains). I'm deeply worried about what the next few years are going to be like.
"Standard Gauge is thin. Standard Gauge is beautiful. Standard Gauge goes anywhere and lasts all day. There’s not right way or wrong way. It’s crazy powerful. It’s magical. You already know how to use it. It’s 11,500 miles of track and counting. All the worlds” interchanges in your hands. It’s 4 ft. 9 in., standard. More rail than you could ride in a lifetime. It’s already a revolution and it’s only just begun."
Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 1886, the railroad network in the southern United States was converted
Isn't that something like 21 years after they lost "The War of Northern Aggression" known by Ken Burns and the yankees as "The Civil War"?
Give me 21 years to pre-plan and pre-position supplies and workers and I can probably pull 11500 miles of CAT-5 in 2 days.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It seems like any time there was a curved track section, it wouldn't work to just move it in 3 inches since the old piece would be to long or too short (depending on which way the curve was going). Not sure exactly how frequent this is, but I would think there would be quite a few to replace in 11,000+ miles of track. That would actually be interesting to me since you would have to have all the new pieces ready and on site (since you couldn't move them with the track torn up) waiting for that day.
There's not much rail traffic between the americas and Russia, nor will there be in the forseable future... For cargo we have intermodal containers, which are compatible with almost any guage.
It needs to be done once again when larger areas want to connect. And then continents.
Europe - Asia no problemo
N.A. - Australia this is getting difficult
S.A. - Antarctica now that's ridiculous.
Arguably with intermodal all that really matters is container size, since you'll be switching transport providers every couple thousand miles anyway.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Metric would be good.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Mosyt of those, there are clear advantage to. easy base conversion and unit creation, unambiguous and lexical-chronological sorting equivalence, more than 4bil addresses respectively
is there some clear advantage to 240v 50hz AC?
"This month ends with the -125th anniversary of one of the most remarkable achievements in the technology future. Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 2136, the gui manager for the linux desktop was converted from the old-earth version one to one compatible with the slightly narrower one used in the space federation. The shift was meticulously planned and executed. It required one side of every gui to be moved three inches closer to the other. All font sets had to be adjusted as well. Some minor animations and rolling stock were sensibly deferred until later, but by Wednesday, the 11,500 megaline code base was back in business and able to exchange screenshots with the rest of the world. Other operating systems are still struggling with incompatible interfaces. MicrApple still has two. Most of the solar system runs linux, but the outer planets use essentially the same gui gauge as old earth and CmdrTaco and timothy use an even broader gui size. Alpha centari has a multi-year Project Unigui, aimed at converting its narrow gui lines to the federation's five foot six inch standard."
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
Of course, there will always be rouge nations using odd guages.
It needs to be done once again when larger areas want to connect. And then continents. And again until we actually get the whole world to use the same. And by that time trains are obsolete already.
When it comes to trains the US is "all aboard" the standards express, but when it comes to the metric system, nada.
Houses are already wired for 240v, just not most appliances so not most outlets. Few residential applications use synchronous motors, so the frequency doesn't matter much (beyond higher frequencies allowing smaller transformers). And at least mainland North American countries all use the same plug.
With a long A and a hard G.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Date format is stupid all around the world. Everyone should just use 2011-05-08 15:00. Yes, drop the stupid am/pm stuff too.
Outside of rail circles, this is the FIRST time I have heard the Great Gauge Change mentioned. I am quite shocked really.
We pretty much are, 4' 8 1/2" is standard in most of the world.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
and that is the 7ft 0.25in of Brunel's GWR.
anything else is just a sham.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
wow that must be one mother of a plug
Is it just me or is it a little amusing that the guy who was telling them that the 4 ft. 9 in. gauge wasn't necessarily a good idea was named John C. Gault?
I wonder if Ayn Rand had any idea.
Well if you're going to do that then you should also drop the 24 hours clock - 24? What's up with that??? The 100 hour/day clock makes much more sense - think of all the overtime we'd get!
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Railroad's advantage is in lower friction than rubber tire on cement. That is maximized with slow freight railroads, which the United States has among the best in the world. Most of the energy losses at ~200 mph, are aerodynamic, not friction. Rail does not help there.
Also, high speed transport, including all air transportation, is a fraction of the boring highways. Less than 1 percent of freight travels by air. High speed transportation is more of a luxury. I thus think it is quite logical for the United States not to have high speed rail.
Rouge nations? Would that be the Kingdom of Maybelline, the Covergirl Islands, or the Republique de l'Oreal?
And what's a "guage"? It sounds french. Do you pronounce it "goo-aj", "g-ow-gh", or "joo-a-jee"?
Fire marshal had a heart attack when he saw all the daisy chained power strips.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Now let's see this applied to the Japanese grid (60/50Hz split).
I think Swatch made a watch that basically counted 1000 .... ticks? per day. So you'd wake up at, say, 300, go to work from 400 to 800, etc. Just found it
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There is a slight advantage to having 240v but not much. Cables can be thinner and carry the same amount of power since the amps are lower. But, for the highest power devices in US homes (water heaters, clothes driers, ovens, etc) they are already on 240V. For other appliances there isn't enough advantage to justify switching the entire country and changing billions of dollars of infrastructure. The efficiency advantage is small. 60hz has the advantage as far as frequency goes. 60hz distribution systems are slightly more efficient. 60Hz steam turbines are smaller than their 50hz counterparts, which saves material costs for turbine manufacturers (and the utilities who buy them). There is basically no difference to the end-user. All the advantages/disadvantages are on the utility and distribution side. Again, there is no compelling reason to change the entire US over to 50Hz, and change out billions of dollars of infrastructure.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Oh, I see you use the Microsoft theory of "standard" aka: make shit up that doesn't match what anyone else is doing, then try to force everyone to follow.
(yes, I know you were being factious, so was I.)
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
How did they get the work done on time? How many people were involved?
11,500 miles/track is around 32 million railroad spikes that have to be pulled and respiked in the new location. If it takes one person 20 seconds to pull a spike and rehammer it in, it would take a crew of 16,000 people working 16 hour shifts to do the work in 3 days. And this is only the guys that are doing the spiking, it ignores the thousands of others that would be involved in moving (and lengthening/shorting curved sections when necessary) the rails, altering the running stock gauge and handling the supply logistics for materials, food, water, housing, etc for these large teams. So maybe 20,000 - 25,000 workers were involved?
I think most of the world works on 240/50. It would make travelling, a lot easier. Different plugs, sure that's easy, and adapters are small, but to have to bring converters with you, that's a pain. Although I have just looked up which countries use what, and actually it's not quite such a clearcut divider as metric/imperial.
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I'd like to know which country has an electric grid that makes the US grid look primitive. Japan still has the 50/60Hz split, the US grid has been 60Hz only since 1948 (albeit there are remnants of 25HZ systems for railway/electrochemical use). Haven't heard anything about Europe that makes it superior to the US. China might have an edge due to the newness of their infrastructure.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Well, as long America is a British Empire Colony, no way to explain them the beautiful simplicity of the Metric system.
(Sorry my bad French) Je fais parler les Guignols de l'Info. Le pied, quoi.
The fact that the old Soviet trains ran on a non-standard gauge was a contributing factor to the survival of the Soviet Union from the German blitzkrieg. Germany was not able to immediately use the Soviet rail system to reinforce and supply its troops, and was faced with having to use a few captured locomotives while re-engineering the Soviet rail system to accommodate German trains. Because of this most of the supplies needed by the army had to be shipped by road, except there are a few months out of the year when Russian roads turned into rivers of mud...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Ireland, however, uses 5' 3". Fortunately we are an island, with no rail intercommunication with anywhere else :-)
Yeah, but there is any advantage on 50Hz? Or any disadvantage? Or any kind network effect?
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Don't yuo hate when poeple invert thier diphthongs?
is there some clear advantage to 240v 50hz AC?
No. Frequency is largely irrelevant. The only common (although probably not so much anymore) residential application I can think of are wall clocks with synchronous motors using the line frequency to keep time. Increasing the voltage would give you more usable power out of your common 15/20A household branch circuit, but that's it. Perhaps you could lower the total number of branch circuits by going to higher voltage, but I don't know how many people would really care that they have 1/3 fewer breakers. Or you have crazy ass things like the UK ring circuit.
Take a look at a lot of your electronics and you'll see that they probably accept a "universal input" of 50/60Hz between 100-240VAC. One distinct advantage higher frequency has is allowing smaller size of components like transformers. This is why you'll see things like 115VAC @ 400Hz in aircraft.
this is my sig
Obviously, your education was lacking in firearms training and the study of railroads. You should have put a couple years in the Navy. You would have learned that a riot gun is actually a 12 guage shotgun, and that a 5 inch 54 caliber gun's chamber is 54 inches long, and 5 inches diameter where it necks down into the barrel.
First "g" is hard, the "au" is a long "a" second "g" is soft. End it right there - the "e" is silent. I guess you could sound it out if I were to spell it G-A-J-E.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Date format is stupid all around the world. Everyone should just use 2011-05-08 15:00. Yes, drop the stupid am/pm stuff too.
Try: 1500 08-05-2011
Funny but you do know standard gauge is not a metric standard. So when is Europe going to finish it's move to metric and change all their rail road tracks to some metric standard?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It could still aid rail car manufacturing, which is an international industry with orders for trains in one country from companies in a different country.
I'd like to know which country has an electric grid that makes the US grid look primitive.
I don't think it's so much that the US grid is primitive compared to other countries. Rather it is primitive compared with the available technology and projected needs. The monitoring and control equipment on much of the grid remains rather primitive, the wire infrastructure is fragile (major outages every time a serious storm blows through), many areas still depend on sending a person out to read the meter for billing, there is a too much interdependence without adequate safeguards, local generation (solar, wind, etc) remains problematic in many places, generation sources are relatively dirty, usage controls are primitive, etc. Most of our infrastructure was built decades ago and (IMO) too little was allocated for ongoing upgrades nor were the increases in demand adequately planned for.
The grid works but it's not nearly as robust, efficient or clean as it could be. That's the problem.
And, how do you pronounce 'savages'?
WINN-dohs YUZ-ers
John
I have no idea if this is true, but I've always liked this story that's been going around the 'net for years...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I took the trans mongolian railway from Moscow to Beijing about 10 years ago. One memorable experience is that near the border between Russia and Mongolia (or Mongolia and China i forget) they will change the bogie's on the entire train because the gauges differ in russia and china. The entire trainset is lifted up; the bogies moved out and new ones put in place. A very memorable experience.
naah sig schmig
And perhaps you should have paid attention in your English classes. It's "gauge", not "guage". There's no such word as "guage" in the English language.
Wooshed! by he who himself was wooshed.
Also, for those who can't tell, I inverted the "o"s in woosh for added effect.
LOL - alright, I knew that, but you win because I wasn't paying attention!
You've seen those tests, where they type sentences, paragraphs, even pages of stuff with a lot of letters missing or transposed. People read right through them, because they "fix" it in their own minds. Guage or gauge, I read it the same.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.
Your forgot Esperanto.
143.5cm. There, all done! Now get cracking on moving all those rails 0.1mm closer.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
"i find 8-5-2011 the most logical date order"
Logical in what way? the digits are most significant first, and the date/time elements are least significant first.
If you want to be consistent with least significant first, you would have:
00:51 80-50-1102
If you want most significant first, you would have:
2011-05-08 15:00
Which is international scientific
2011-05-08 15:00 sorts naturally left-to-right. 1500 08-05-2011 requires you to parse out the elements and sort on each one individually.
Internally, though, you should just use POSIX time, which is universal and mostly easy to handle, only becoming difficult when you have to make distinctions based on traditional representations (and that's *always* difficult). Convert it out to whatever format the users need when necessary.
Most significant on the left is the natural order for most writing systems (if you're not from the middle east), and including leading zeros makes it easier to sort automatically, thus 2011-05-08 is more logical than 8-5-2011. Both are more logical than 5-8-2011, though.
That's an odd thing to say, seeing as how the UK has been transitioning to metric for quite a while now.
I was surprised to find that this was standardized in the same Act of Parliament that mandated 4' 8 1/2" in Britain - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Regulation_(Gauge)_Act_1846
To be pedantic, when referring to artillery, and specifically naval artillery, a 5"/54 caliber gun would have a barrel length of 270 inches; as the 54 refers to the number of diameters that the barrel is long, not the chamber length.
Just so you know: most countries in the Americas use 120v. Europe used to use 120v, as well. Now, the Old World almost all use 240v. ( http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm )
Shall we standardize our electrical plug shapes, too? At least the US and most of North America has a standard shape. There are currently 13 different plugs because everyone wanted to develop their own.
240v 50Hz.
They'd be better off going to 240v 60Hz (currently used in some parts of Asia, IIRC) as that allows older devices to work with only a simple passive converter transformer; high-power applications such as motors are much more likely to need to be frequency matched than low-power applications such as electronics.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
No, little-endian makes more sense because it's consistent. In your example, you've got a big-endian super-format, where each of the constituents are little-endian. That's just stupid.
And there's already a standard for dates. ISO 8601. It's basically what the parent described.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Sorry, why again should we bow down to you people, oh great and wonderful god-like perfect Europeans?
It's standard etiquette, at least in civilized countries.
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
Around the time of the French Revolution, the French came up with some metric ways of measuring time. They created a calendar of 30 days each month (with five extra days each year), and the time of day was split into divisions of ten ("ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
Since it started driving higher currents through the same resistance (in this case the human body)
It's very difficult to design your outlets to limit the current that will go through a human without limiting what will go through an electronic device, however lower voltages have less ability to overcome the same resistance to cause large amounts of current to flow through the heart (which is usually the important bit in the "killing" part)
110v can kill you, so can 5v, or 3000v. But if I had to choose, I'd much rather trust the natural resistance of my skin to adequately limit the current flow from a 5v, or even 110v system than a 3000v one, or even a 240v one.
On a somewhat related note, I know someone who moved from Britain to Canada many years ago, his primary reason to do so was because we use 110 instead of 240. He worked as an electronics repair person (mainly TVs) and was sick of taking 240v shocks. Personally I've always described it as "110 tickles, 240 doesn't!"
Yes. Beats. But there was a single timezone, so you might wake up at @900, get to work at @950 and leave at @350 the following day.
An elegant system but no pressing need to change when everyone's standardised on hours minutes and seconds.
Well, as long America is a British Empire Colony, no way to explain them the beautiful simplicity of the Metric system.
It always makes me smile that the UK runs on the metric system. I'm 30 and I only know the imperial measurements from road signs and the British Pint (~568ml).
One thing that everyone (except programmers) does wrong is dates in the Gregorian system. It would be much easier if we just went small endian: 2005-12-31 or 2005/12/31 is much better than 6/4/2005 because it sorts logically and can't be confused as dd/mm/yy and mm/ddy/y are.
Mmmmm, perhaps you meant to say facetious?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Not really. Not enough to justify changing it anyway. There are devices (usually clocks) that expect a 60Hz input. 50Hz is a more common standard but enough of the world uses 60Hz to stick to it.
Also I've heard that 60Hz televisions can cause strobing issues with 50Hz fluorescent tubes, although that may just be something I read on the internet.
Hey, get China and India to standardise on your units and we'll consider it ourselves.
Thing is we all think standardisation is good. Most of the world uses metric. It's easier for the 5% to change than the 95%.
US is Metric. By law. Passed in Congress in 1866. Not mandatory, but still---
Go to the store. Look at boxes of cereal, cans of vegetables, bottles of soda, etc.. All measured in metric units.
Uh, and would your Sig. apply to Roger?
And here I thought this might be about Feynman's work on quantum electrodynamics.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
So we should change our meters to read in metREs?
I think we're forgetting about how the trains into Australia will need to be scanned for any small breasted women who could be seen by pedophiles.
Today it would cost billions, and take years to do this. Just how far has the US come in flexible able engineering? It has gone backwards.
I always thought the best gauge for trains was the standard N-gauge. I still have my Rock Island Golden Rocket in a box down in the basement. My gramps was an engineer for the Rock Island and I rode it from Chicago to the West Coast several times as a kid. What a magnificent train that was. It had a 12-bedroom sleeper car called La Palma and it was like taking a room at the Four Seasons from Union Station to Los Angeles. You'd fall asleep crossing the Mississippi at St Louis, lulled by the gentle motion and wake up in the Rockies.
The coffee in the dining car ("El Comedor") was a special blend. It was served in those silver pots with heavy, short beige and red china that said "Golden Rocket". Delicious roasted potatoes and pork chops. Man, that was one sexy way to travel. Screw Southwest Airlines. If there were still decent passenger trains in the US, I'd never sit in another cramped 737 with a smelly fat-ass on either side of me eating cardboard extruded cookies.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A safety switch will protect you from large currents - they are designed to shut off the supply as soon as there is a difference between active and neutral current, or if there is a leak to ground.
I have been stung by 240v a couple of times too, when I was younger. I haven't had a hit in years, now I treat it with much more respect and caution. Also if your friend is careless enough to get get bitten by 240v and 110v, , it's just as well TV's don't need fly-back circuits any more or he'd be getting bitten by the several thousand volts from those circuits.
A friend once bought a laser printer in the US (60Hz) and took it to New Zealand (50Hz). The power supply handled the 120v to 240v issue, but the motor that fed the paper through the system couldn't handle the frequency difference so that when he printed, the image on the pages was compressed because the paper moved too slowly.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
...they remained on track to complete the change on time, and the project didn't go off the rails.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
And of course there isn't much rail traffic currently between europe and russia, the rail stock uses different gauges.
Not exactly. In fact the rolling stock exchanges the wheels at the borders. The whole waggon gets liftet from the bogies, the bogies are rolled away, new bogies of the right gauge are rolled in, and the waggon gets eased down on the new bogies.
The TALGO train which is used between Spain and France has adjustable wheels to adapt to the different gauges.
I know you're joking, but there isn't any particular reason for us to convert. And that's really the biggest hindrance to us doing so. There are a few areas like science and inter-operating with other countries where converting would be useful, but the reality is that for most things it's just not that helpful. And we tend to do a lot of things, like cooking, with fractions rather than decimals.
More than that, I don't see an undertaking that substantial to be worth the cost and confusion in the middle.
...the link in the article now points to a blank page. Try this instead: http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8.ZZZ/gauge.html
With light bulbs running at 50Hz, you can see them flicker out of the corner of your eye. Its just at the edge of the range where yours eyes can tell the difference.
Some linear power supplies (think transformer, diode bridge, caps) that are designed for 60Hz will fail in ugly ways with 50Hz power. The current capacity of the transformer is reduced, and for power supplies that are already heavily loaded (which is disturbingly common for unregulated supplies) this can push them over the edge. (Not to mention the effects that frequency has on the desired size of filter caps, which might also be insufficient at 50Hz)
Much of the audio gear I have would be unhappy at 50Hz.
The opposite usually works fine, though: Linear supplies designed to operate at 50Hz are generally happy at 60Hz, as the current capacity increases.
On the other hand, most of the current breed of switching supplies don't really care much about input voltage, frequency, or waveform: They're so not picky, these days, you can pretty much feed them anything resembling AC and they'll either produce proper output, or no output.
Kid-proof tablet..
A single gauge track network makes the most sense, but where you have multiple gauge networks, why not make the trucks adjustable? It sounds like a problem that even 19th century engineering could have solved.
The US has a freight rail system that is the envy of Europe. (Europe is ahead in passenger rail, but that loses money.) Intermodal traffic (containers) is way up over the last decade, and profitable. There's new rail construction going on, and rails and locomotives have been upgraded in recent years.
Modern large locomotives use what are essentially giant computer-controlled servomotors to drive the wheels, so that all the wheels on all the locomotives stay in sync and share the load equally, which means they can all be torqued up to just below where they start to slip. This means fewer locomotives per train, little or no wheel slip, and the ability to coordinate many locomotives spread throughout a train.
Last year, Union Pacific ran a train 3.5 miles long from Los Angeles to Denver. Average freight train length in the US is now 6500 feet and climbing. That replaces a lot of trucks. Since Los Angeles built a no-grade-crossing rail connection to the port there, far fewer trucks are moving to the port.
Europe still has a lot of little 2-axle freight cars. Those disappeared from US trackage some time before World War Two, replaced by the standard big four-axle cars still used today. The bigger cars are also stronger, with a consistent minimum coupler strength, which means longer trains are possible.
Mixing high speed passenger trains and freight on the same track cuts severely into freight capacity. Each passenger train uses up the track time of six freights.
Hmmm, got modded Troll for that... methinks somebody has their panties in a bunch. A really tight bunch. Or thinks America is perfect just the way it is. Either way kind of sad.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Eh, unless you're traveling with your laser printer or microwave, converters are mostly a thing of the past. All the stuff I normally travel with (cell phone, possibly laptop, camera chargers, anything electronic) already accept a universal input of 50/60Hz 100-240VAC. The real problem now is physically plugging them in.
Resistive devices like a curling iron or hair dryer that don't have a 120/240 switch still need an adapter though.
this is my sig
Do you say "2011, August 5th"? English speech states the year last, and tends to have the month first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_gauge
It's 4 ft 8 1/2 in.
********************
I object to Intellect without Discipline.
A safety switch will protect you from large currents - they are designed to shut off the supply as soon as there is a difference between active and neutral current, or if there is a leak to ground.
Which does absolutely nothing if you aren't grounded. if the current is passing through you from one prong of the plug to the other there is no way for the circuit to know the difference between you and a toaster. And simply limiting the amount of current won't help either because it only takes about 60mA to kill you if it flows through the right places. (and most of the things you legitimately want current to flow through require a lot more than that)
Although ground fault breakers are big safety improvements, they just can't protect you if you're contacting both wires, and not ground.
Numeral representation needn't follow how you say it.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Shall we standardize our electrical plug shapes, too? If it's schuko I'll consider it.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Oddly enough, some Australians DO want to emigrate to the U.S. And we're OK with letting that type of person go.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Yes... perhaps I did....
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Science marches forward, nowadays several variable gauge systems have been invented. Two types are in use in Spain, where I did my MBA.
check this:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Variable_gauge_axles
So yes, the gauge change had to be done in the 19th century, but nowadays is less of a necesity.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Between Vancouver Island and the mainland trains use ferries ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_ferry ) which I guess Ireland misses out on with incompatible lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well the singer, he had long hair,
And the drummer, he knew restraint.
And the bass man, he had all the right moves,
And the guitar player was no saint.
So let's go way back to the ancient times
When there were no fifty states.
And on a hill, there stands Sherman,
Sherman and his mates...
And they're marchin' through Georgia!
They're marchin' through Georgia!
They're marchin' through Georgia!
G-G-G-G-G-Georgia!
They're marchin' through Georgia!
They're marchin' through Georgia!
Marchin' through Georgia!
G-G-G-G-G-Georgia!
And there stands R.E.M.
The Admin and the Engineer
50Hz requires more iron in the core of power transformers than 60Hz. Similar effects apply to motors. Now that consumer electronics have switched to high frequency switching supplies, that's not much of an issue for the end user. It does still matter for the transformers used in the power grid to step down from higher distribution voltages to lower domestic voltages.
And it always will.
And by that time trains are obsolete already.
I really rather doubt trains are ever going to be obsolete, barring us figuring out cheap teleportation. There's simply no better method of moving stuff en masse across land.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
When Hell reaches 0 degrees C.
Have gnu, will travel.
Printed in metric perhaps, but definitely not measured in metric, barring litre and two litre bottles. Unless there's some other good reason to use non-round numbers, like 355ml, other than the fact it lines up with a round imperial measurement, like 12 fluid ounces. Or 591ml bottles, which is 20 ounces. Or 710ml, which is 24 ounces.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Believe it or not, our date format was chosen at a time when there didn't exist machines that could alphabetize lists of dates automatically. I know it's shocking, you might want to sit down for awhile.
Comment of the year
is there some clear advantage to 240v 50hz AC?
Perhaps you could lower the total number of branch circuits by going to higher voltage, but I don't know how many people would really care that they have 1/3 fewer breakers.
God, no. It's already bad enough that when I want to cut power to one room, I have to take out 2 other rooms with it. If anything, I want MORE breakers, even if they aren't electrically necessary
If the American south could convert to standard US gauge in only two days, why us is it taking the rest of the world so long to convert to US standard measurements? It can't be that hard to ditch the 4 syllable metric system for the more efficent 1 to 2 syllable Imperial system.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Agreed. As a user I prefer 22:19 8 May 2011. It really reduces the ambiguity.
In Military Messages we used a DTG (Date Time Group) which would be in this case: 082219 May 2011 which seemingly breaks all the rules.
Ooo can I reply to the troll?
Yep. I sure want to leave Australia and move back to the US. I'm getting so sick of the higher salaries, greater number of holidays, mandated 4-6 weeks of annual leave, the more casual work-to-live culture, cleaner environment, low crime rate, higher life expectancy, affordable healthcare, booming economy, 1-5% unemployment (depending on State), good food, having decent quality TV news and current affairs (ABC/SBS), stronger consumer protection laws, massively lower poverty rate, having more choice in phone and internet services, not getting nudie-scanned or groped at airports, oh the list goes on. I'm just itching to get out of here!
Ok so that's a bit tongue-in-cheek - I'm a dual American and Australian citizen and still spend a lot of time in both countries. No emi/immigration required for me. And there's still stuff that the US has Australia beat at. The highway system there is better than in Australia (which suffers from having a huge area but not a huge population/tax base to fund things from). The cost of living (particularly housing) is less too (though, wages are lower which offsets some of that advantage). The natural environment is also more diverse (don't get me wrong - Australia is beautiful, but it simply doesn't have the diversity of environments and climates that the US/North America does).
But at this point in time I don't think you'd find to many Australians wanting to emigrate to the US. Perhaps the very wealthy, who would like to take advantage of the lower income tax for high earners. But Australia has been incredibly prosperous for the last decade or two - the middle class along with the rich. The financial crisis didn't even scratch it. Not surprisingly, it consistently ranks as one of the top handful of places to be (both in 'economic' and 'quality of life' indices).
Having said that, there is a HUGE number of Australian tourists in the US in the last year or so. This is because it's now incredibly cheap to do so: the AUD is worth more than the USD for the first time in history (thanks to the US Fed printing USD like it's going out of style). The buying power of the AUD in the US is huge at the moment. Combined with generally higher Aussie wages and the already-low prices of goods in the US, it's a shopping bonanza. I have guys at work ask me to get clothes and running shoes and stuff for them when I visit the US because due to the currency movements it's literally less than half the cost. Hell, for big ticket items, it'd be cheaper to fly to the US, buy it, and fly back, than to buy it locally...
Most Australians travel internationally quite regularly. Not just to the US. Not every country is like the US where only a tiny proportion of people have a passport.
Did you just call me a savage? I'LL KILL YOU!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
"Over two days [...] the railroad network in the southern United States was converted [to] standard gauge"
Compare and contrast: 2 days to convert 11,500 miles of railways to narrower gauge vs. PSN downtime.
Of course I know Visa's probably reaming Sony for PCI concerns right now, but I'm still going to sit back with this delicious popcorn and enjoy the show.
Most any piece of line-operated electronic equipment is cheaper on 60 Hz than 50. Energy storage capacitors can be 17% smaller, and so can line-frequency transformers
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
India & China already use metric, 240v 50Hz, and most other common units. What's your point?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
"4.71 inches otta be enough for anyone."
Table-ized A.I.
English speech states the year last, and tends to have the month first.
Interestingly, not in countries which use the DD/MM/YYYY format. In the UK, it is quite uncommon to hear "May the 8th 2011", and far more common to hear "8th of May 2011".
I've often wondered about that in a chicken-and-egg sort of way. Was it the American turn of phrase, with the month first, that led to the US MM/DD/YYYY annotation, or is it the fact that the MM/DD/YYYY annotation is a US standard that has led people to adopt that turn of phrase? And vice versa for the UK?
N.A. - Australia this is getting difficult
S.A. - Antarctica now that's ridiculous.
I'd go for N.A. - S.A. and S.A. - Australia.
Shorter bridges, so less expensive.
Or we go N.A. - S.A., S.A. - Antarctica, Antarctica - Australia (via Tasmania). ;)
Who doesn't want to spend 2 months on a train to see the penguins in their natural habitat?
But, for the highest power devices in US homes (water heaters, clothes driers, ovens, etc) they are already on 240V.
But those are (were, it differs and is changing) on 400V three phase here. As is industrial equipment, bigger motors, welders etc (some of which are not uncommon in home workshops). And you don't have that available. The "European" system is 230/400V, not just 230V.
Stefan Axelsson
Ah, yes arrogance. Let me guess - you're from Europe? That's the only part of the world that has the arrogance to insist everyone else should live, act, and think exactly like they do. Woe to the person(s) who don't.
I have to resist the urge to point out all the ways that Americans insist everyone else should live, act and think exactly as they do.
That between them they represent a couple of billion people, so if anyone is going to change to accommodate others, [perhaps it should be the 300 million or so in the US.
No. But if I'm looking for a component to fit my metric device, and there are offers from India, China, Japan and the US, All else being equal, I'll go for a country that speaks metric so I don't have to also invest in a bunch of imperial tools to maintain the thing.
America is losing out in the export market.
One of the Colin Kapp "unorthodox Engineers" stories had a planet where no two railway lines used the same gauge.
'The Railways Up On Cannis' or maybe 'The Subways Of Tazoo'.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
that should actually be easier to accomplish and would benefit more people.
Well, arguably having an incompatible railway network won World War II on the Eastern Front, so, I'm not counting on the Russians changing their system just yet. ;-)
the US government was not building rail lines. The majority of rail lines built in the 180s were done by private businesses, many without any grants or federal assistance. As such we have an abundance of rail still to this day for moving freight. As society improved roads became dominant because people valued their freedom, freedom to travel and where to live, all within their means.
I don't understand why so many bemoan out passenger train service. There are only two profitable lines in the world and all the rest require subsidy because the expected number of riders never materialized. There is also the problem in the US of population density, or lack thereof across much of the country. I remember many years ago (think early 90s) having friends over from France who asked if I could pick them up at the airport. They flew into NY, I live in Atlanta. They asked about a short train ride and I explained to them how long it would take. Naturally they flew to Atlanta from NY. We then lent them our van and they toured the US. What was supposed to be two weeks for them turned into six.
It is all about scale. Railroads do what they do best here, move freight. We then top that off with a large number of trucks because as a people we value convenience. That means not having just a few stores with items we want but many stores. It really is phenomenal how convenient we have it. Bring friends over from the Poland and Czech and they were amazed not at our grocery stores (they actually have a couple of good ones) but the sheer number of them. Just driving back from the airport to my house (twenty miles) we passed more of them than they knew of in their own home areas. Not one of them even mentioned travel by train btw, apparently they are quite used to travel by car. Even going so far as to tell me, never drive through Poland with a car that has German plates.
We don't have a need for widespread high speed rail. We don't have the population density to support it. Even Europe doesn't have it in many areas even served by rail. It takes a lot of extra money to keep it all operating. Regardless of what some think, travel by train ain't fast, no matter the speed of the train. Airports even with our boneheaded security will get you farther faster. I can engineer a few "what about X to Y" but it still doesn't make it right.
I love this one fact, the US moves nearly fives times as much by rail as Europe does. This is measured as how much freight is moved by train. Now tell me who has the problem?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I wouldn't say it was uncommon to hear the month-first representation in speech in the UK, but to see it written down as MM/DD/YY is a complete mind-bender.
What is uncommon is to hear "May nine, two thousand eleven", where the usual UK phrase would be "the ninth of May, two thousand and eleven". Americans seem to drop syllables all over the place.
Also, Americans break their month-first rule by celebrating their Independence Day on the "fourth of July", instead of "July four".
No one will invest in a Bering Straight tunnel with that attitude.
I think Queensland wants to become the next US state only.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
depends how overweight they are
which is totally what she said
Incandescent lightbulbs are far to slow to flicker at that frequency (I can't believe they'd cool more than 10 degrees in the zero passing. It's just way to short) and CFL's have a electronic ballast which requires them to have a high frequency (about 5 KHz I believe). Large scale modern TL arrays (office) usually have an electronic ballast too (and thus are at a high frequency). Old small scale TL's do flicker at 50 Hz and can cause headaches.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Other routes don't have rail connections but usually you can travel by coach, e.g. Eurolines. You probably get turfed off the coach on one side and there is another waiting on the other side.
Internally, though, you should just use POSIX time, which is universal and mostly easy to handle
It is not possible to reliablly convert a future time from local time to universal time reliablly because you don't know what definition of local time will be in force. Therefore for all future dates (e.g. a scheduling application) you should really be storing the originally requested time and timezone (and whenever your timezone data changes you should re-run validation to check no new conflicts have been introduced). Not doing this will cause user confusion.
Also note that POSIX time has a leap second issue. It is supposed to be tied to UTC which has leap seconds but posix time has no way of representing those so you get some kind of time jump or distortion arround them. This may be important if you need to accurately and reliablly handle times iarround midnight UTC (not sure what that maps to in american local time)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You're picking nits. What do you want, egg in your beer too? 354 ml is every bit as much a 'measure' of what's in the bottle as 16 fl. oz. is.
There are two measurements on every box, can, and bottle: metric and US. Since at least the 70s, everyone has been taught the metric system in school. There are highway signs with both miles and kilometers; though perhaps not in Kansas. The speedometers in my cars have a KPH scale. The Buick my dad bought new in 1977, fricken 1977, was built with metric fasteners. Ditto for the Mercury he bought new nine years later.
How much more do we need to do to be 'on the metric system'?
There are, what, about 200 million Americans over the age of 16, who, despite all the above, are apparently happeier with US measurements? You think you're going to convince them to switch to something else? Overnight? If so, I've got a bridge to sell you.
There are costs of trans-shipping between gauges, etc ; but it's not a totally one-way calculation. You do need to evaluate the alternatives.
Yes, reducing the number of gauges in use would have benefits for rolling stock manufacturers, but they're only modest benefits since equipment is built in batches on short production lines. Again, there's a calculation involved in the bidding. And there is an external relevant standard for new systems : the shipping container. If you can get standard shipping containers along your line, then the drive to upgrade/ completely rebuild would be lower.
Which standard to choose ... probably varies from one continent to another. Though the cited Australian morass illustrates the problem well.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I was at BEA World in San Diego years ago, and one of the presenters for a JMX topic was extolling the virtues of "Gwadge Beans". It took me a while to realize he'd learned 'Gauge' as 'Guage'.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Don't you mean woohs?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
an even-keeled response
Don't yuo hate when poeple invert thier diphthongs?
Is that 'code'?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Yeah, every time I go to the beach people laugh at my inverted diphthong.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Not really, the logistics of carrying a train across a ferry, is far more higher than just going by train to departure port, taking ferry, then catching another train at the destination.
Have a nice day!
There's not much rail traffic between the americas and Russia, nor will there be in the forseable future...
Heh, apparently Slashdot users pay as little attention to past articles as the editors do.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/07/04/18/2240257/The-Worlds-Longest-Tunnel
Ah, the dreams we used to have, back when we thought we had had money :-P
Yes, that's right. Until the whole world is on one gauge. It is vital that North American trains can cross over into Australian track and European trains can cross over onto South American track. Just be sure to mind the clearances when on the lower line where the Great Atlantic Trestles cross.
I don't see it as much more than an inconvenience. After all, car companies seem able to cope with different emission standards, lighting regulations, steering wheels being on different sides and the like.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, since the distance between rails was determined by the size of a horse's ass, does that mean the Southern horses were better fed?
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp
Seriously though, the snopes writeup notes that the South used not just five-foot gauge but a total of three different ones, and that that inconsistency was one of the factors that decided the Civil War.
logical in this way: when i ask someone what date (no mention about the time) is it, it is most likely that i don't know the day, after that it is most likely that i don't know the month and in the very rare case i might not know the year either. so, my way of writing the date (or speaking it) gives the reader (or listener) the info that he most likely wants first, and then in decreasing order of likeliness. also, the date is not a long number, it is a set of three values. you cannot jumble up the insides of those values.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
when i ask somebody the date i'm almost always asking it for the day, not month or year, which i usually know. so i find 8-5-11 much more logical than according to significance.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I know he's joking too, but all that Europe did to "convert" was say "it's now 1435mm". Assuming all the European (and Canadian?) rail wagon/infrastructure manufacturers already use metric -- and I know they do in the UK -- I wouldn't be surprised if some in the US were anyway.
I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to build a house that only had 50A service, and has been for some time. (You'd never pass electrical inspection.) Current code calls for at least 100A 220V split-phase, and most will have 150A and up. I think even my grandmother's house (built in '45) has better than 50A service. Likewise with the non-polarized and/or ungrounded sockets. (Again, not code-compliant for a very long time.) And rolling blackouts are quite rare; they are largely confined to California during only the most extreme heat waves. They aren't "yearly."
Ok, you can't run a 3kW power tool in your kitchen. That's hardly "dismal." (And getting a split-phase outlet installed for that purpose is a cheap job that can be done by any electrician.)
Just a question. Would 5 foot and a half as mentioned really be 1.5 meters as a width?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I'm thinking of freight, not passengers as Canada is like the States with crappy expensive train travel. For passengers and automobiles there is an extensive car ferry system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yeah but there's a shitload of traffic between Europe and Russia, and having to regauge at the transition point is a pain in the ass. Costs money and time.
Why would I want to use a format created to suit things as they no longer exist?
The busses stop every block or two at worst. Nearly everything you'd want to go to is on the El and frequently it's much faster than traveling via car. Having to park a car on the city streets, however, is the total opposite of freedom. Between street cleaning tickets, break-ins, stray balls from kids, bad drivers taking out your mirrors, and other headaches on top of what you'd have in suburban car ownership, it takes a hell of a lot of time and money to deal with.
"the AUD is worth more than the USD for the first time in history"
Oh my. I feel old. I predate history!
I believe back in the early 80's, when I was in high school, that the AUD was more than the USD. It dropped way below overnight when the Oz government devalued the AUD.
My economics teacher even predicted the devaluation and I believe made some money on currency speculation.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
But if they hand gone metric at
the same time we would not have
missed that space shot to the Mars.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
You are educated stupid if you deny 4 equal 24-hour days per rotation of Earth. 96-hour Cubic Days debunk 1-day as witchcraft.
354 ml is every bit as much a 'measure' of what's in the bottle as 16 fl. oz. is.
There are two measurements on every box, can, and bottle: metric and US
And which of those measurements is a number you can do math on (e.g. 591ml bottle, 460kJ per 250ml, how many kJ per bottle?) without a calculator/pen&paper? Granted, this is marketing manipulation, but unit games are what facilitates it.
Since at least the 70s, everyone has been taught the metric system in school.
To a questionable degree of completeness, judging by the number of people I talk to who can't grok that watt-seconds=joules and insist on assemblages like x per second per watt.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
But those are (were, it differs and is changing) on 400V three phase here. As is industrial equipment, bigger motors, welders etc (some of which are not uncommon in home workshops). And you don't have that available. The "European" system is 230/400V, not just 230V.
Actually, 277/480V is quite common in the states for commercial and industrial uses. You can get it in your house too if you are willing to pay for it, but most people are not since there isn't any compelling reason to do so. The monthly service fees for the 480V hookup far exceed the cost of the extra copper that is required for the lower voltage cable.
Keep in mind that electricity in the states is commonly distributed at 14.4kV and 120/240V is just the voltage you get after it has been converted by the step-down "pig pole" transformer on the neighborhood telephone pole. 120/240V is a convenient standard for home users the same way that 277/480 is a convenient standard for commercial and industrial customers. If you need something special and are willing to pay, the electric utility is more than happy to work with you and bill you accordingly.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Didn't know the details of that. You learn something every day. Yes, in northern Europe three phase 400V/230V is the most common subscriber hook up. I have it to my house, with 20A fuses I pay $300 a year in service fees. (I could probably get by with 16A easily, as there is no electric heating anymore, but I haven't bothered to have the meter fuses downgraded).
And we do transformers here also. We just don't put them on poles... :-) I have only something like 30 meters of underground cable to my substation. (They typically service a couple of houses). The feed to that is typically 10kV though it differs by country.
Single phase supplies (like yours but with only one voltage) are getting more common in southern Europe though, for no really good reason.
Stefan Axelsson
That depends where you live. Around here the power is rarely out for more than a moment, and even those times are infrequent.
Power in general is quite reliable in most of the US in the sense that power outages are infrequent and normally short - rarely more than a few hours a year most places absent a major natural disaster. Nevertheless, I am not aware of any location in the US that is not subject to periodic power outages and (primarily due to cost) much of the infrastructure is not installed in the most reliable methods possible. I've had two power outages of several hours duration (due to storms) in the last 9 months and at least a dozen short power interruptions of a few seconds. Those could have been avoided with buried cables but buried cables are expensive so the more vulnerable above ground system is used. It's a tradeoff but it's unclear if the cost/benefit ratio is optimized.
My point isn't that the power in the US is bad - it's actually amazingly good. Rather, my point is that the power system in the US isn't nearly as good as it could be. Our currently available technology significantly exceeds the capability of the vast majority of our electrical grid. Remote monitoring equipment is only fairly recently getting rolled out. My place now is the first place I've lived where I don't have sometime come out to read the meter. The sophistication of the equipment in most houses, businesses as well as at the utilities to monitor and adjust usage is positively archaic and only very slowly improving.
Actually I think there will be some interesting improvements coming down the road if plug-in hybrid autos catch on like I think they will. Some improvements will come very naturally as power companies try to keep costs in line. Other improvements will probably require a bit of prodding by our government and by consumers to take place, such as emissions regulation. Power companies don't make money by getting you to consume less energy so they have a built in disincentive to make certain types of efficiency improvements.
I'm 35, German and can't recall a power outage because I never experienced one.
I don't know much about the German grid but a few facts come to mind.
Perhaps you have never experienced a power outage (I'm dubious of your claim but perhaps it is true) but if you are going to compare the US grid to the German grid, you need to understand the differences in what the engineers on this side of the pond face.
who perhaps don't know, given the sad state of education in the u.s., that all of europe was rebuilt about 60 years ago under the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
Sorry - should have said "first time since the dollar was floated", not "in history". The AUD has historically been higher than the USD before, but only because its value was artificially pegged to the USD. Once it become a freely traded currency, as you alluded to, its value plummeted overnight :)
This Uniqugauge project in India is more than a decade old. Majority of the metre guage (exactly 1 metre wide) have now been converted to borad-guage (5 feet 6 inches). This has tremendously improved connectivity to both passengers and frieght across the country. There are no bogie changing or wheelset adjusting mechanisms in use anywhere here. The broadguage trains run much smoother and faster than the metre guage ones. The narrow guage tracks are mostly in use on the mountains. Only a handful narrow guage tracks on the plains are being converted to broadguage. Typically it takes 3-5 years for the convertsion to complete and for that duration no trains will run on that section. Quiet absurd really, blocking travel for years.
Not every country is like the US where only a tiny proportion of people have a passport.
Very tired old urban legend. Its closer to 1/3. If you play games with "lifetime ownership" vs current and up to date the number is much higher. Mine has expired, and I don't want a RFID tracking device, and I don't want to be molested by the TSA agents who apparently got their soft skills training by watching movie portrayals of SS agents, and I don't have the vacation time available to travel anyway. I'm healthy and have a stack of money.
The other 2/3 probably don't even have the basics like decent housing, decent food, decent health insurance, so expecting them to travel the world is kind of irrational. Maybe they should, you know, buy food to eat, or medical care, first.
Also USA people have approximately zero vacation time compared to anywhere else in the civilized world, I literally don't have time to go to Europe even though I could quite easily afford it (and when I was younger, I somehow did, and had a blast, even if it was only a "long weekend"). I don't have much vacation time, and most of it gets used one day at a time on family events, etc. I haven't had more than seven consecutive days away from work since... fall of '91?
The odds are in the USA you'll either have the money to travel, or the time to travel, or the health to travel, but rarely all three simultaneously.
The other aspect is, in Europe, at least before the EU, it was hard to travel 100 miles in any direction without needing a passport and maybe a visa. In the US 100 miles is just a boring weekend drive. At one point in the past, US citizens only needed a drivers license to visit Canada and Mexico (maybe still true?) so for at least some of us, we would need to travel many thousands of miles to reach a country to use a our passports... /. automotive analogy is pretty much anywhere other than the US or USSR, you need a passport if you drive your car more than one hour, but in the USA you could possibly drive in one direction for the better part of a week before either hitting water or a customs station.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Oh I understand the ~reasons~ behind the low rate of passport holders in the US. I have lived in the US myself for many years, and when I raised the question, the vacation time problem is the one most often mentioned to me. I do understand this - it simply isn't worth the cost of the airfare to go overseas for only a week or two. I definitely now appreciate having the >4 weeks annual leave that is mandated by law here in Australia. I usually take at least three of those weeks in one hit every year and travel overseas during that time. So do most of my friends and colleagues. I earn a pretty average middle class salary so this is by no means something that's unusual here.
It's a real shame though - so many Americans are missing out on the wonderful experience of travel through no fault of their own. And it's sad that it's simply unaffordable for so many. Without meaning to troll, I admit I was genuinely shocked when I first became aware the sheer number of people in America living near or at the poverty line. I mean, every country has its share of low income earners for whom even housing, food and healthcare is a struggle to afford. But in Australia it is comparatively a very small proportion of the total population. In America it's much, much greater (statistics like 20-25% spring to mind, but don't quote me on it). I never really understood that until I lived in the US myself, having grown up knowing that per capita GDP was higher in the US and assuming that since America is such a rich country, most must live comfortably. What I didn't understand was the huge disparity in incomes - your GDP per capita may be slightly higher but it's skewed by the 1-2% of the population that's ultra-wealthy.
Anyway I did a bit of Googling and the most recent official figures I could find was a passport ownership rate of around 25% for the US and a little over 50% for Australia. Once you eliminate children, that probably rises to around 1/3rd and 2/3rds respectively, which sounds about right to me from what I've seen in both countries. That discrepancy must be substantially due to the two things you mention: greater annual leave entitlements in Australia, and the flatter income distribution (Australia has less super-wealthy, but also very few living close to poverty - it's a comfortably middle class place). Geographically, Australia is actually more disadvantaged than the US when it come to travel - it's the same size as the lower 48, but much further from most foreign destinations except SE Asia. In the US you are lucky to be only 7 hours or so from Europe. Here it's a full 24 hour flight (and at least 15-18 hours to the US).
Can trains ever truly go obsolete? Physics students, help me out on this.. Isn't their some kind of rule that concentrating power generation into fewer large engines is more efficient than many smaller ones? For example the big coal plants produce electricity more efficiently than a million little single home generators would. Semis are more efficient than a fleet of pickup trucks and a single train engine pulling a mile long chain of freight cars is more efficient than a fleet of semis. Sure, we may have advances which make the semis more efficient but the trains will benefit from the same technology.
Also, don't even try to say any kind of aircraft will replace trains. Sure, it's great for getting items somewhere in a hurry but not only do you require energy to take the goods the distance but you need way more energy just to get it all into the air and keep it there.
I think trains are here to stay. What we need are more tracks.. AND lot's of trestles, bridges and tunnels so that we keep trains and cars from crossing paths. We don't need more railroad crossings.