simple depot/station question

Why did railroads display the " elevation " on the depots/station billboards, and do they still do that at smaller station/depots. I've seen this on older photographs from the 30's/40's and older pictures.

 

Interesting question. I remember seeing the "Elev." signs on many stations throughout New England when I was a kid, and didn't have a clue back then either.

I wonder if it had something to do with the early days of flying. During the early days of airmail delivery, pilots only flew during the day when they could follow railroad tracks. In the evening they landed in fields near towns with railroad stations where they spent the night. It's possible they used the Elev. signs to set their altimeters before leaving in the morning.

Remember that the original definition of "IFR" was "I Follow Railroads".....:tb-tongue:

 

Until they stopped printing them in the early 80's Queensland Railway's public passenger timetable books also showed the elevation of each station. Interesting information for the railfan to know if the train is going to be climbing or going down grade, but you'd wonder why, or if, the average traveler cared.

 

I don't know if it makes a diffrence, but when I did most of the narrow gauge trains in Colorado, they all had the elevation signs too. A Conductor I spoke with on the Georgetown Loop then, told me it was to inform passengers who suffered from altitude sickness up in the mountains so they were aware of it. I cannot confirm anymore of this as I was about 10 at the time I was in CO. That's my 2 cents from my experience anyways.

 

If these links work, this discussion on the highest station in Queensland was going on in the Brisbane Courier Mail newspaper in 1934, so people were interested in this kind of thing. Scroll down the first one till you come to 'Argument' of Sandgate.

NLA Australian Newspapers beta - article display

NLA Australian Newspapers beta - article display

If you suffered from altitude sickness you'd probably know it before you read the sign.:tb-wacky:

 

It might have been for the crews - if they knew enough of their altitudes, they can calcualte the minimum grade they might have to deal with in the next section of track.

Or someone was interested in altitude - you see them along roads too. And they're still on the GPS thingies too!!!

 

I buy that response more then the one I got from a conductor as a kid. It actually makes more sense. Especially for engineers who have to know exactly what their dealing with.

 

An engineer, I'm speaking as one, would know the grade from his knowledge of the railroad, you don't run a train on your own over a route until you can demonstrate that you know it like the back of your hand, I imagine that would be as true in the 19th century as it is now. I'm not sure I'd like to be a passenger on a train with an engineer who was finding his way from one station to the next by reading the signs, especially with a wheezing 4-4-0 and brakes that left a lot to be desired by today's standards. I think the simple answer is that it was general information for the public, same as when you drive through a town and there's a sign telling you the name of the place, population and other bits and pieces of information.

 

Ya you're right about that, sorry, it's like 3AM here and my brain isn't tracking right

 

well, look at it this way - your engineers who knwo the route like the back of their hand know what the sign says at every single station before they get thee, so they already have the whole elevation profile stored away in their head - along with the little intricacies on the route. Your greenhorne wouldn't be driving quite yet, he'd be watching the route taking these things in. He might not know the route so well, and he might be green enough that a 1% grade is nearly invisible, but if there's a station ever 40 miles, he's sure to start getting some of these numbers into his head...

That's my thought, at least. It's not a matter of memorizing all of them, but those that are meaningful. It helps those at the helm keep track of things even when things might slip a bit - it there was no sign at all, who's to say where "5,000 feet" actually is? Even an old guy can forget precisely where that sign is, but its like the Grade on I-10 between Flagstaff and Campverde, I can tell you where the 6,000 marker is and the even the 5,000 marker - now remembering if there is a 4,000 maker is a bit harder, but it does seem to be a there somewhere!!! If I passed it I could tell you for sure!

 

NOW WAIT A SECOND!!!!

Let's put this in Proper Physics terms!!!

If we state our "knowns" and then look at it in terms of "unknowns," we might be able to figure out Why the elevation is posted everywhere at the strain stations!!

In this great world we know where we are, but we have no easy way to determine height above sealevel - especially if sealevel is hundreds of miles away. and yet we know the heights long before GPS came along!

Surveying always runs by benchmarks - things of known height. If you go too far out on the horizon, however, you cannot be competely accurate due to the curvature of the earth.

A railraod is an interesting feature becasue in effect it is the equivalent of drawing a line across the land. Once the rail is laid, we have a Definate length, so we know the length of the line, with all the arcs that it goes through. In the proces of building this railroad, our railroad engineers and surveyors routinely checked alignment, route mapping, and especially grade elevation - it's a simple matter of good construction habits. How else do you grade a railroad?? At the beginning of the day you have to know how steep of a grade you can accept and at the end of the day you have to know if you made the grade right!

So here we arrive at an Unknown; what is the elevation of point X on the railroad line? You pick any arbitrary point anywhere and you might get relative height, but it's pretty hard to get a sea level height if you don't know your height above sea level.

There's my hypothesis: the Station was the benchmark for the rest of the town, whereas the station was the center for town activity, and often the first building built. The rest of the area around a town wouldn't be surveyed in deeper detail until after the town was established with the arrival of the station. If there was an old survey done before the railraod survey, the new railraod survey would be used to compare and correct the older values. These new surveys would be verifying earlier surveys done, getting the error ever more reduced - you could figure the first survey to be very rough compared to this second survey.

So your Railroad surveyor, having this information readily handy at the end of each day, made sure to tack it up at each landmark. It's all about the benchmarks!

 

You could have hit on something there, when the railroads were built they were most likely the first time accurate surveys had been made in some areas.

I still don't go with the theory that its for train crews though because I can't see it being of much use to them, for instance if station 'A' is at 100 feet and station 'B' is 10 miles away and at an elevation of 150 there's not always a steady grade between the two, there could be ups and downs or an easy grade part of the way that stiffens up near the end. I couldn't tell you the elevation of any station I run through or even what the actual grades are, but I know where they are and when to use a bit more throttle, or start applying the brake if I want to get home in one piece.

 

Yep, that's why I threw it out!! I tookt hat second thought of "whee the heck did the numebrs come from" and form there I ran off to do a Google search and came bck to the station being the central hub of activity...and then it hit my like a freight train. You can't get much more accurate [elevation wise] then a railroad where every linear foot has been in some way measured by a surveying crew!!!And this survey crew would not have to deal with the up and down of hills - jsut the up and down of grades, which is MUCH easier to deal with!

I did some measurements for a mining claim survey project [16 original claims] using equipment htat really hasn't changed. The first is a brunton, which is your compas on steroids - it can not only measure 360 on the plane, but it can also measure up to 90 perpendicular to the plane. The second tool is a good tape measure - 100 feet, of course!

Now your surveyor would use some other tools - mainly the sight box that goes on top of the tripod, and a metered stick held by the helper a measured distance from the tripod center - the measuring tape becomes the hypotenuse [extremely accurate] while the verticle stake becomes the opposite leg. And you can bet your batootee every single mile of a railroad was in someway measured like this in the course of construction!!

That would make railroad numbers the first real accurate measurements in many areas, more accurate then any measurement before. Yes, the more developed areas had roads already which would have perhaps employed similar surveying, but traditionally roads are built a bit more...savagely...

So that completely erases any intended use by the crews - it might have been helpful, but the crews knew the route by the stack of the locomotive!! [if everything is right, there should barely be a whisp of smoke off the stack!!! Clear Vapor = good clean efficient burn! too white = too much water; too black, too much fuel!]

 

I bet it was souly for information purposes only. Just to let folks know how high above the ocean they were along the route. Kind of "look what we have done" statement.

 

Kind of like the pilot of an airliner telling you how high you are flying today.

 

I wonder if the mileage to the next station would be more useful to the crews & passengers?

For example:If you know it's 40 miles to the next station but your tender is 1/2 full Fill the tender here or run the risk of running out. The water pipe may be over in the yard & not on the mainline.
On some roads, IIRC the water facility could be 10-20 miles apart but coal was provided in 40-50. The crew that ran out of water/fuel would catch hell or be out of a job soon.

The mileage could be useful for time/distance problems. That 40 miles could be an hour away (running late).

 

But wait, wouldn't you already be aware of how much "fuel" the tender would need to climb the grade to begin with? Although, if you don't refill your water, doesn't that technically cause a boiler explosion because the water got too low?

 

1. If you knew your job you would, you don't see many old photos of trains at servicing stops with the engineer trying to calculate on pencil and paper how much fuel and water he needs. Railroading in the steam era was much more a seat of the pants operation than anything we know today.

2. Not necessarily, if due to unforeseen circumstances, like a broken drawbar or the like causing delays, a crew found the water in the tender getting low, (if you were delayed you'd be keeping an eye on it), they'd drop the fire and wait for assistance. If for some reason they just didn't take water and ran out they'd never hear the end of it from their bosses or other crews who would be delayed themselves or have to rescue you, so you and your fireman would be always watching water and fuel. If the water in the boiler did drop before they could drop the fire they had fuseable plugs, lead plugs that melted if the water dropped below them and released the pressure. I think a lot of boiler explosions were caused by other failures besides low water.

 

Maybe for the passengers, but not for the crew. The crew knows how far it is to the next station. It the same distance it was yesterday and the day before and the day before. As far as a newbie not knowing, if you are that new your not making any important calls on this run.

As far as elevation I would go with the benchmark idea, here's my imperical (sp?) evidence. The main benchmark for Chadron, NE sits where the old C&NW depot use to be, and many other benchmarks run down RR right aways.

Adam