Oops.

That above is what I get for running two different browsers on the same fine site. Erm, no, nothing actually died, and I can't blame the cat. My gooph.

Coat..? Check.

'Twas not always thus...

Aaron Hart Posted Tuesday 27th January 2009 17:46 GMT

"It was and is just not possible to have a mass trans system to cope with the distances needed."

My friend, kindly look up one key phrase: "Interurban Transport System". Many rather large and sprawled-out regions of the world do employ them to this day.

Sadly, Goodyear Tire and Rubber had forced rubber-tyre'd buses onto US city streets (and gladly torn out the old Interurban Transport System's tracks for free to clinch the city bus contracts, I was informed much later) by the time I was born. But by me sainted Poppa's account, at one point in his own youth up to about the mid-1920's or early '30s, one could indeed pack a bag lunch (or several, depending) and ride at leisure pretty much from NYC to DC (Boston, Baltimore and all) by electric-driven semi-open-car Interurban rail, with stops in every major burg along the way. The system at her peak extended, I am told, as far inland as Chicago, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Akron and Cincinnati OH plus Louisville, KY too on her own spur; indeed pretty much the lot of US cities east of the Mississippi River were at one point tied together with cars running every couple of hours at worst.

For a quarter or less, depending. With unlimited transfers from any City-owned line to any other. So does this style of life seem interesting to you?

Irrelevant Related Item: My momma's poppa actually had a hand in building the electrical propulsion systems these now-destroyed-"forever" vehicles employed out Illinois way, I gather from crumbling family documents and related memories that Few Today Want to Even Know About®.

Hey, even accounting for the Bush-whacked US currency's inflation and general national hollowing-out of recent tortuous days, that prior approach spells S-E-R-V-I-C-E just fine by my own lights. Those stubby-lookin', thirty-passenger DC-self-propelled trolley-wire-fed light rail vehicles might have been a tad bit jolt-y and meagerly heated, not to mention the inefficiencies imposed by field coils in the traction units (Co/Sm permag motors solve that one) and resistive speed control strongly resembling the kit of any Cushman golfers' cart (pulse-width modulation is indeed far superior) - but they reliably got one there in one piece at thirty to forty-five MPH, and (with proper trip planning) right on time.

One can hardly find that degree of interconnectedness in US public land transpo at all, these days. Air ain't always much better, either, I gather. Amtrak? OK so far as she goes... Yes, I like rail transport just fine.

Item: Those old interurban lines were apparently treated as City-owned public utilities while still in operation. Cities tended to own their own steam-driven central generating plants with somewhat abundant overcapacity Back Then, too. Corporate greed and indifference to prevailing human factors plus nationwide collusion @ City Hall effectively killed it all off, though. Now many of the former ITS railbeds have become bike paths and nature trails too, which is at least something of an enduring legacy on a nice summer's day in these parts.

Gee, today's wind-farms run just fine on desolate ground too, now don't they just? Let banks of decently sized fifty-year-service-life Ni/Fe/NaOH-electrolyte batteries be housed along the route, and hey presto there goes the ol' DC line-drop factor right into its proper submission to intelligently informed human will! So what IS the Big Problem with such things as these, these days, anyway, folks?

Folk sure did some grand things wi' a li'l spot o' 'leccy in them days, Sonny... But now it has been nigh onto five generations of Continuous Corporate Progress with Minimal Quality of Life Improvement, although at great gross cash-in-coffers profit over the fraud+PR-driven "Business Cycle". Nobody born anywhere close to half-past-yesterday could be justly blamed for not being entirely aware of such an "extincted" inter-civic achievement as that corpy-murdered transpo' network sure was.

But so cluing others is a decent part of what us Funny-Hatted Curmudgeons of this world are still here for. Here's to ya, Kid. (drains pint)

Now I'll get me coat. Mine's the one with the time-yellowed hardcover copy of Mr. Robert McClosky's childrens' classic, "Henry Huggins and the Donut Machine", which as a sidebar to the main plot (by way of the Nickel Jukebox) provides its every reader with a delightful earworm of a ditty-chant dating from the exact Period in Question:

"When you punch, Brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the Pass-en-jare! A BLUE trip slip for a two-cent fare! A PINK trip slip for a ten-cent fare! A GREEN trip slip for a two-bit fare! So when you punch, Brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the Pass-en-jare!"

jammed into the left-hand pocket for ready reference.

So: Mission accomplished re the delivery of that wee non-faulty humint/history payload, at any rate. Enjoy the rethink and take up accordingly, my friend! I'd like to be at a certain sort of ribbon-cutting afore I leave the planet, yessirree I would.

Ah. There she is. With a wee Serpollet triple-expansion three-stack 120-degree single-crank-journal steam en-jine model still in running condition gently nestled in the right-hand pocket as well; that low-tech long-distance kit's still safe as can be and just as easy to build, too. G'nite f'now!