1.
Rail transport
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Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks. It is also referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a flat surface. Tracks usually consist of rails, installed on ties and ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels. Other variations are possible, such as slab track, where the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger. The operation is carried out by a company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway system or produce their own power. Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system, Railways are a safe land transport system when compared to other forms of transport. The oldest, man-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC, with Periander, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Rail transport blossomed after the British development of the steam locomotive as a viable source of power in the 19th centuries. With steam engines, one could construct mainline railways, which were a key component of the Industrial Revolution, also, railways reduced the costs of shipping, and allowed for fewer lost goods, compared with water transport, which faced occasional sinking of ships. The change from canals to railways allowed for markets in which prices varied very little from city to city. In the 1880s, electrified trains were introduced, and also the first tramways, starting during the 1940s, the non-electrified railways in most countries had their steam locomotives replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, with the process being almost complete by 2000. During the 1960s, electrified high-speed railway systems were introduced in Japan, other forms of guided ground transport outside the traditional railway definitions, such as monorail or maglev, have been tried but have seen limited use. The history of the growth, decline and restoration to use of transport can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used. The earliest evidence of a railway was a 6-kilometre Diolkos wagonway, trucks pushed by slaves ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element. The Diolkos operated for over 600 years, Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany
2.
James J. Hill
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James Jerome Hill, was a Canadian-American railroad executive. He was the executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains. Because of the size of this region and the economic dominance exerted by the Hill lines, Hill was born in Eramosa Township, Wellington County, Upper Canada. A childhood accident with a bow and arrow blinded him in the right eye and he had nine years of formal schooling. He attended the Rockwood Academy for a short while, where the head gave him free tuition and he was forced to leave school in 1852 due to the death of his father. By the time he had finished, he was adept at algebra, geometry, land surveying and his particular talents for English and mathematics would be critical later in his life. After working as a clerk in Kentucky, Hill decided to move to the United States and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. His first job in St. Paul was with a steamboat company, by 1860, he was working for wholesale grocers, for whom he handled freight transfers, especially dealing with railroads and steamboats. Through this work, he learned all aspects of the freight, during this period, Hill began to work for himself for the first time. During the winter months when the Mississippi River was frozen and steamboats could not run, Hill started bidding on other contracts, because of his previous experiences in shipping and fuel supply, Hill was able to enter both the coal and steamboat businesses. In 1870, he and his partners started the Red River Transportation Company, by 1879 he had a local monopoly by merging. In 1867, Hill entered the business, and by 1879 it had expanded five times over. During this same period, Hill also entered banking and quickly managed to become member of several major banks boards of directors. He also bought out bankrupt businesses, built them up again, Hill noted that the secret to his success was work, hard work, intelligent work, and then more work. During the Panic of 1873, a number of railroads, including the St. Paul, the StP&P in particular was caught in an almost hopeless legal muddle. For James Hill it was a golden opportunity, for three years, Hill researched the StP&P and finally concluded that it would be possible to make a good deal of money off of the StP&P, provided that the initial capital could be found. Hill teamed up with Norman Kittson, Donald Smith, George Stephen, together they not only bought the railroad, they also vastly expanded it by bargaining for trackage rights with Northern Pacific Railway. In May 1879, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and his first goal was to expand and upgrade even more
3.
Great Northern Railway (U.S.)
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The Great Northern Railway was an American Class I railroad. Running from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, the Great Northerns route was the northernmost transcontinental railroad route in the U. S. The Great Northern was the privately funded – and successfully built – transcontinental railroad in U. S. history. No federal land grants were used during its construction, unlike all other transcontinental railroads, the Great Northern was built in stages, slowly to create profitable lines, before extending the road further into the undeveloped Western territories. In a series of the earliest public relations campaigns, contests were held to promote interest in the railroad, fred J. Adams used promotional incentives such as feed and seed donations to farmers getting started along the line. Contests were all-inclusive, from largest farm animals to largest freight carload capacity and were promoted heavily to immigrants & newcomers from the East. The earliest predecessor railroad to the GN was the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, James Jerome Hill convinced John S. Kennedy, Norman Kittson, Donald Smith, George Stephen, and others to invest $5.5 million in purchasing the railroad. On March 13,1878, the roads creditors formally signed an agreement transferring their bonds, on September 18,1889, Hill changed the name of the Minneapolis and St. Cloud Railway to the Great Northern Railway. On February 1,1890, he transferred ownership of the StPM&M, Montana Central Railway, the Great Northern had branches that ran north to the Canada–US border in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. It also had branches that ran to Superior, Wisconsin, and Butte, Montana, connecting with the mining fields of Minnesota. In 1898 Hill purchased control of parts of the Messabe Range iron mining district in Minnesota. The Great Northern began large-scale shipment of ore to the mills of the Midwest. At its height, Great Northern operated over 8,000 miles, the railroad’s best known engineer,1889 to 1903, was John Frank Stevens. Stevens earned wide acclaim in 1889 when he explored Marias Pass, Montana, Stevens was an efficient administrator with remarkable technical skills and imagination. He discovered Stevens Pass through the Cascade Mountains, set railroad construction standards in the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota and he then became the chief engineer in charge of building the Panama Canal. The logo of the railroad, a Rocky Mountain goat, was based on a goat William Kenney, the mainline began at Saint Paul, Minnesota, heading west and topping the bluffs of the Mississippi River, crossing the river to Minneapolis on a massive multi-piered stone bridge. The Stone Arch Bridge stands in Minneapolis, near the Saint Anthony Falls, the mainline headed northwest from the Twin Cities, across North Dakota and eastern Montana. The line then crossed the Rocky Mountains at Marias Pass, and then followed the Flathead River and then Kootenai River to Athol, Idaho and Spokane, the main line west of Marias Pass has been relocated twice
4.
Pacific Northwest
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The Pacific Northwest, sometimes referred to as Cascadia, is a geographic region in western North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Though no agreed boundary exists, a common conception includes the U. S. states of Oregon and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Broader conceptions reach north into Alaska and Yukon, south into far northern California and east to the Continental Divide, thus including Idaho, Western Montana, narrower conceptions may be limited to the northwestern US or to the coastal areas west of the Cascade and Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the history, geography, society. The Northwest Coast is the region of the Pacific Northwest. The term Pacific Northwest should not be confused with the Northwest Territory or the Northwest Territories of Canada. The border — in two sections, along the 49th parallel south of British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle west of northern British Columbia — has had an effect on the region. According to Canadian historian Ken Coates, the border has not merely influenced the Pacific Northwest—rather, definitions of the Pacific Northwest region vary, and there is no commonly agreed-upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common conception of the Pacific Northwest includes the U. S. states of Oregon and Washington as well as the Canadian province of British Columbia. Broader definitions of the region may include the U. S. state of Alaska, the Canadian territory of Yukon, the portion of the state of California. Definitions based on the historic Oregon Country reach east to the Continental Divide, thus including all of Idaho and parts of western Montana. Sometimes the Pacific Northwest is defined as being the Northwestern United States, often these definitions are made by government agencies whose scope is limited to the United States. Some definitions include, in addition to Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia, Southeast Alaska, western Montana, the coast of northern California, the Pacific Northwest has been occupied by a diverse array of indigenous peoples for millennia. The Pacific Coast is seen by scholars as a major coastal migration route in the settlement of the Americas by late Pleistocene peoples moving from northeast Asia into the Americas. Other evidence for human occupation dating back as much as 14,500 years ago is emerging from Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon, however, despite such research, the coastal migration hypothesis is still subject to considerable debate. Due in part to the richness of Pacific Northwest Coast and river fisheries, in the interior of the Pacific Northwest, the indigenous peoples, at the time of European contact, had a diversity of cultures and societies. Some areas were home to mobile and egalitarian societies, others, especially along major rivers such as the Columbia and Fraser, had very complex, affluent, sedentary societies rivaling those of the coast. In British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, the Tlingit and Haida erected large, throughout the Pacific Northwest, thousands of indigenous people live, and some continue to practice their rich cultural traditions, organizing their societies around cedar and salmon
5.
Liverpool Overhead Railway
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The Liverpool Overhead Railway was an overhead railway in Liverpool which operated along the Liverpool Docks and opened in 1893 with lightweight electric multiple units. It was also the second oldest electric metro in the world being preceded by the 1890 City, in the early 1900s electric trains ran on the electrified Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to Southport and Aintree. Special trains to Aintree for the race meetings ran twice a year after regular services were withdrawn. Being a local railway it was not nationalised in 1948, originally spanning 5 miles from Alexandra Dock to Herculaneum Dock, the railway was extended at both ends over the years of operation, as far south as Dingle and north to Seaforth & Litherland. A number of stations opened and closed during the operation owing to relative popularity and damage. At its peak almost 20 million people used the railway every year, in 1955, a report into the structure of the many viaducts showed major repairs were needed that the company could not afford. The railway closed at the end of 1956 and despite public protests the structures were dismantled in the following year, as a result of the massive amount of traffic, congestion, and overcrowding of the dock roads, resulted in many proposals for transport solutions. Rails had appeared in the Liverpool Docks in 1852, linking the warehouses and docks, from 1859, adapted horse omnibuses ran for passengers on these rails, they had wheel flanges that could be retracted to allow the vehicle to leave the rails and overtake a goods train. By the 1880s, there was a service every five minutes. An elevated railway was first suggested in 1852, and in 1878 the Mersey Docks, the MD&HB applied to the Board of Trade based on this plan, but it was rejected and there was no further progress. The Liverpool Overhead Railway Company was formed in 1888 and obtained permission for double-track railway in the same year, engineers Sir Douglas Fox and James Henry Greathead were commissioned to design the railway. Steam traction was considered and the structure floored to prevent ash falling to the street below, Sir William Forwood, the Chairman of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, had studied American electric railways, and in 1891 electric traction was chosen. The works commenced in 1889, and were completed in January 1893, the structure was to be made of wrought iron girders a nominal 16 ft above the roadway. A total of 567 spans were erected, most being 50 ft long, the standard gauge railway was laid on longitudinal timbers on the elevated sections. Four bridges were constructed to cross wider streets, hydraulic lifting sections were provided at Brunswick, Sandon and Langton Docks to allow goods access to the docks. To allow shipping access to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, at Stanley Dock a bridge was replaced by a combined lifting and swing bridge, at Bramley-Moore Dock, the railway dropped to road level to pass under the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway coal tip branch. As the gradient was 1 in 40 this was known as the switchback, originally the conductor rail was placed between the rails, energised at 500-525V DC. The power was supplied by a station at Bramley-Moore Dock that received its coal directly from the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway branch line which passed above
6.
Diesel engine
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Diesel engines work by compressing only the air. This increases the air temperature inside the cylinder to such a degree that it ignites atomised diesel fuel that is injected into the combustion chamber. This contrasts with spark-ignition engines such as an engine or gas engine. In diesel engines, glow plugs may be used to aid starting in cold weather, or when the engine uses a lower compression-ratio, the original diesel engine operates on the constant pressure cycle of gradual combustion and produces no audible knock. Low-speed diesel engines can have an efficiency that exceeds 50%. Diesel engines may be designed as either two-stroke or four-stroke cycles and they were originally used as a more efficient replacement for stationary steam engines. Since the 1910s they have used in submarines and ships. Use in locomotives, trucks, heavy equipment and electricity generation plants followed later, in the 1930s, they slowly began to be used in a few automobiles. Since the 1970s, the use of engines in larger on-road and off-road vehicles in the US increased. According to the British Society of Motor Manufacturing and Traders, the EU average for diesel cars accounts for 50% of the total sold, including 70% in France and 38% in the UK. The worlds largest diesel engine is currently a Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C Common Rail marine diesel, the definition of a Diesel engine to many has become an engine that uses compression ignition. To some it may be an engine that uses heavy fuel oil, to others an engine that does not use spark ignition. However the original cycle proposed by Rudolf Diesel in 1892 was a constant temperature cycle which would require higher compression than what is needed for compression ignition. Diesels idea was to compress the air so tightly that the temperature of the air would exceed that of combustion, to make this more clear, let it be assumed that the subsequent combustion shall take place at a temperature of 700°. Then in that case the pressure must be sixty-four atmospheres, or for 800° centigrade the pressure must be ninety atmospheres. In later years Diesel realized his original cycle would not work, Diesel describes the cycle in his 1895 patent application. Notice that there is no longer a mention of compression temperatures exceeding the temperature of combustion, now all that is mentioned is the compression must be high enough for ignition. In 1806 Claude and Nicéphore Niépce developed the first known internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore fuel system used a blast of air provided by a bellows to atomize Lycopodium
7.
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad
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Beginning in the 1890s and accelerating in 1903, New York banker J. P. By 1912, the New Haven operated more than 2,000 miles of track, with 120,000 employees and this quest for monopoly angered Progressive Era reformers, alienated public opinion, resulted in high prices for acquisitions, and increased construction costs. Debt soared from $14 million in 1903 to $242 million in 1913, even as the advent of automobiles, trucks, also in 1913, the federal government filed an anti-trust lawsuit that forced the NH to divest its trolley systems. S. Until the Enron Corporation superseded it in 2001, the majority of the system is now owned publicly by the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was formed on July 24,1872, through the consolidation of the New York and New Haven Railroad and Hartford and New Haven Railroad. It owned a line from New York City to Springfield, Massachusetts via New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut. The company later leased more lines and systems, eventually forming a monopoly in New England south of the Boston. The New York and New Haven was built later, as it ran parallel to the Long Island Sound coast and it opened in 1848, using trackage rights over the New York and Harlem Railroad from Woodlawn in the Bronx area south to New York. From 1913 on, Grand Central Terminal served as the New Havens New York City terminal, about the beginning of the 20th century, New York investors led by J. P. Morgan gained control, and in 1903 installed Charles S. Mellen as President. Morgan and Mellen achieved a monopoly of transportation in southern New England, purchasing other railroads and steamship. More than 100 independent railroads eventually became part of the system before and during these years, substantial improvements to the system were made during the Mellen years, including electrification between New York and New Haven. But the Morgan-Mellen expansion left the company overextended and financially weak, under the stress of the Great Depression the company became bankrupt in 1935, remaining in trusteeship until 1947. Common stock was voided and creditors assumed control, after 1951 both freight and passenger service lost money. The earlier expansion had left NH with a network of low-density branch lines that could not pay their own maintenance, the freight business was short-haul, requiring switching costs that could not be recovered in short-distance rates. They had major commuter train services in New York and Boston, the demise of the New Haven may have been hastened by the opening of the Connecticut Turnpike in 1958 and other interstate highways. With decades of investment, the New Haven could not compete against automobiles or trucks. In 1954 the flashy Patrick B, McGinnis led a proxy fight against incumbent president Frederic C. Buck Dumaine Jr. vowing to return more of the companys profit to shareholders. McGinnis won control of the railroad and appointed Arthur V. McGowan, McGinnis attempted to accomplish many of his financial goals by deferring maintenance
8.
Train station
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A train station, railway station, railroad station, or depot is a railway facility where trains regularly stop to load or unload passengers or freight. It generally consists of at least one platform and a station building providing such ancillary services as ticket sales. If a station is on a line, it often has a passing loop to facilitate traffic movements. The smallest stations are most often referred to as stops or, in parts of the world. Stations may be at level, underground, or elevated. Connections may be available to intersecting rail lines or other modes such as buses. In British usage, the station is commonly understood to mean a railway station unless otherwise qualified. In the United States, the most common term in contemporary usage is train station, Railway station and railroad station are less frequent. Outside North America, a depot is place where buses, trains, or other vehicles are housed and maintained and from which they are dispatched for service. The two-storey Mount Clare station in Baltimore, Maryland, which survives as a museum, first saw service as the terminus of the horse-drawn Baltimore. The oldest terminal station in the world was Crown Street railway station in Liverpool, built in 1830, as the first train on the Liverpool-Manchester line left Liverpool, the station is slightly older than the Manchester terminal at Liverpool Road. The station was the first to incorporate a train shed, the station was demolished in 1836 as the Liverpool terminal station moved to Lime Street railway station. Crown Street station was converted to a goods station terminal, the first stations had little in the way of buildings or amenities. The first stations in the modern sense were on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, manchesters Liverpool Road Station, the second oldest terminal station in the world, is preserved as part of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It resembles a row of Georgian houses, dual-purpose stations can sometimes still be found today, though in many cases goods facilities are restricted to major stations. In rural and remote communities across Canada and the United States, such stations were known as flag stops or flag stations. Many stations date from the 19th century and reflect the architecture of the time. Countries where railways arrived later may still have such architecture, as later stations often imitated 19th-century styles, various forms of architecture have been used in the construction of stations, from those boasting grand, intricate, Baroque- or Gothic-style edifices, to plainer utilitarian or modernist styles
9.
World's Columbian Exposition
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The Worlds Columbian Exposition was a worlds fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbuss arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, the water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D. C. the Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture, sanitation, the arts, Chicagos self-image, and American industrial optimism. The layout of the Chicago Columbian Exposition was, in part, designed by John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be and it was designed to follow Beaux Arts principles of design, namely French neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor. The color of the generally used to cover the buildings facades gave the fairgrounds its nickname. Many prominent architects designed its 14 great buildings, artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many also made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition. The exposition covered more than 600 acres, featuring nearly 200 new buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture, canals and lagoons, more than 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month run. Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21,1892, the fair continued until October 30,1893. On October 9,1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the debt for the fair was soon paid off with a check for $1.5 million. Chicago has commemorated the fair one of the stars on its municipal flag. Schwab, Chicago railroad and manufacturing magnate John Whitfield Bunn, and Connecticut banking, insurance, the fair was planned in the early 1890s during the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth, immigration, and class tension. Worlds fairs, such as Londons 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, had been successful in Europe as a way to bring together societies fragmented along class lines, the first American attempt at a worlds fair in Philadelphia in 1876, drew crowds but was a financial failure. Nonetheless, ideas about distinguishing the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing started in the late 1880s. Civic leaders in St. Louis, New York City, Washington DC and Chicago expressed an interest in hosting a fair to generate profits, boost real estate values, Congress was called on to decide the location. What finally persuaded Congress was Chicago banker Lyman Gage, who raised several million dollars in a 24-hour period, over. The exposition corporation and national exposition commission settled on Jackson Park, Daniel H. Burnham was selected as director of works, and George R. Davis as director-general. Burnham emphasized architecture and sculpture as central to the fair and assembled the periods top talent to design the buildings, the temporary buildings were designed in an ornate Neoclassical style and painted white, resulting in the fair site being referred to as the “White City”
10.
John Bull (locomotive)
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John Bull is a British-built railroad steam locomotive that operated in the United States. It was operated for the first time on September 15,1831, the C&A used the locomotive heavily from 1833 until 1866, when it was removed from active service and placed in storage. In 1884 the locomotive was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution as the museums first major industrial exhibit, today, the original John Bull is on static display once more in the Smithsonians National Museum of American History in Washington, D. C. The replica John Bull is preserved at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, the John Bull was built in Newcastle, England, by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the first railroad built in New Jersey. It was dismantled and then shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in crates aboard the Allegheny, C&A engineer Isaac Dripps reconstructed the locomotive to the best of his ability and ran it for the first time in September 1831. Until the railroad was completed, the locomotive was placed in storage, the C&A applied both numbers and names to their first locomotives, giving this engine the number 1 and officially naming it Stevens. However, through use of the engine, crews began calling it the old John Bull. Eventually the informal name was shortened to John Bull and this name was so much more used that Stevens fell out of use. In September 1836 the John Bull and two coaches were shipped by canal to Harrisburg, and became the first locomotive to operate there, Stephenson built the locomotive originally as an 0-4-0. The locomotives power was transmitted to the axles through pistons that were mounted under the boiler between the two front wheels and in front of the front axle. These inside cylinders main rods were connected to a crank axle with a connecting rod between the two axles to power the front axle. Due to poorer quality track than was the norm in its native England, the locomotive had much trouble with derailment, the leading trucks mechanism necessitated the removal of the coupling rod between the two main axles, leaving only the rear axle powered. Effectively, the John Bull became a 4-2-0, later, the C&A also added a pilot to the lead truck. The cowcatcher is an assembly designed to deflect animals and debris off of the railroad track in front of the locomotive. To protect the crew from the weather, the C&A also added walls. C&A workshop crews also added safety features such as a bell, after several years serving as a switching engine and stationary boiler, the John Bull was retired in 1866 and stored in Bordentown, New Jersey. Toward the end of its life in service, the locomotive worked as a pump engine. The C&A was soon absorbed into the United New Jersey Railroad, the PRR saw the potential publicity to be gained by exhibiting such an old engine, showing it at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, PRR workshop staff then back-dated the engine
11.
Jersey City, New Jersey
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Jersey City is the second-most-populous city in the U. S. state of New Jersey after Newark. It is the seat of Hudson County as well as the countys largest city. 7% from the 2010 United States Census, when the citys population was at 247,597, ranking the city the 75th-largest in the nation. Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City is bounded on the east by the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay and on the west by the Hackensack River and Newark Bay. After a peak population of 316,715 measured in the 1930 Census, the land comprising what is now Jersey City was inhabited by the Lenape, a collection of tribes. After spending nine days surveying the area and meeting its inhabitants, by 1621, the Dutch West India Company was organized to manage this new territory and in June 1623, New Netherland became a Dutch province, with headquarters in New Amsterdam. Michael Reyniersz Pauw received a grant as patroon on the condition that he would establish a settlement of not fewer than fifty persons within four years. He chose the west bank of the North River and purchased the land from the Lenape and this grant is dated November 22,1630 and is the earliest known conveyance for what are now Hoboken and Jersey City. Pauw, however, was a landlord who neglected to populate the area and was obliged to sell his holdings back to the Company in 1633. That year, a house was built at Communipaw for Jan Evertsen Bout, superintendent of the colony, during Kiefts War, approximately eighty Lenapes were killed by the Dutch in a massacre at Pavonia on the night of February 25,1643. Scattered communities of farmsteads characterized the Dutch settlements at Pavonia, Communipaw, Harsimus, Paulus Hook, Hoebuck, Awiehaken, and other lands behind Kil van Kull. The first village established on what is now Bergen Square in 1660, among the oldest surviving houses in Jersey City are the Newkirk House, the Van Vorst Farmhouse, and the Van Wagenen House. During the American Revolutionary War, the area was in the hands of the British who controlled New York, in the Battle of Paulus Hook Major Light Horse Harry Lee attacked a British fortification on August 19,1779. During the 19th century, former slaves reached Jersey City on one of the four routes of the Underground Railroad that led to the city. The City of Jersey was incorporated by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on January 28,1820, from portions of Bergen Township, while the area was still a part of Bergen County. The city was reincorporated on January 23,1829, and again on February 22,1838, on February 22,1840, it became part of the newly created Hudson County. Soon after the Civil War, the idea arose of uniting all of the towns of Hudson County east of the Hackensack River into one municipality. A bill was approved by the legislature on April 2,1869. An element of the bill provide that only contiguous towns could be consolidated, while a majority of the voters across the county approved the merger, the only municipalities that had approved the consolidation plan and that adjoined Jersey City were Hudson City and Bergen City
12.
Chicago "L"
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The Chicago L is the rapid transit system serving the city of Chicago and some of its surrounding suburbs in the U. S. state of Illinois. It is operated by the Chicago Transit Authority, Chicagos L provides 24-hour service on some portions of its network, being one of only five rapid transit systems in the United States to do so. The oldest sections of the Chicago L started operations in 1892, making it the second oldest rapid transit system in the Americas, the L has been credited with fostering the growth of Chicagos dense city core that is one of the citys distinguishing features. The L consists of eight rapid transit lines laid out in a spoke–hub distribution paradigm focusing transit towards the Loop. Although the L gained its name because large parts of the system are elevated, portions of the network are also in subway tunnels, at grade level, or open cut. In 2014, the L had an average of 752,734 passenger boardings each weekday,486,267 each Saturday, over the next year service was extended to 63rd Street and Stony Island Avenue, then the Transportation Building of the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. In 1893, trains running on the Lake Street Elevated Railroad and in 1895 on the Metropolitan West Side Elevated, which had lines to Douglas Park, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park. Two years later the South Side L introduced multiple-unit control, in which the operator can control all the cars in a train. Electrification and MU control remain standard features of most of the rapid transit systems. A drawback of early L service was none of the lines entered the central business district. The Union Loop opened in 1897 and greatly increased the rapid transit systems convenience, insull instituted many improvements, including free transfers and through routing, although he did not formally combine the original firms into the Chicago Rapid Transit Company until 1924. The construction of the Subway created the necessity to tunnel under the Chicago River, the State Street Subway opened on October 17,1943, the Dearborn Subway, on which work had been suspended during World War II, opened on February 25,1951. The subways were constructed with a purpose of serving as bomb shelters. The subways bypassed a number of curves and circuitous routings on the original elevated lines. In 1947, the Chicago Transit Authority acquired the assets of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company and the Chicago Surface Lines, operator of the citys streetcars. Over the next few years CTA modernized the L, replacing wooden cars with new ones and closing lightly used branch lines and stations. Later, after assuming control of the L, the CTA introduced a service known as the A/B skip-stop service. Under this service, trains were designated as either A or B trains, a trains would only stop at A or AB stations, and B trains would only stop at B or AB stations
