Track (rail transport)
The track on a railway or railroad known as the permanent way, is the structure consisting of the rails, railroad ties and ballast, plus the underlying subgrade. It enables trains to move by providing a dependable surface for their wheels to roll upon. For clarity it is referred to as railway track or railroad track. Tracks where electric trains or electric trams run are equipped with an electrification system such as an overhead electrical power line or an additional electrified rail; the term permanent way refers to the track in addition to lineside structures such as fences. Notwithstanding modern technical developments, the overwhelmingly dominant track form worldwide consists of flat-bottom steel rails supported on timber or pre-stressed concrete sleepers, which are themselves laid on crushed stone ballast. Most railroads with heavy traffic utilize continuously welded rails supported by sleepers attached via base plates that spread the load. A plastic or rubber pad is placed between the rail and the tie plate where concrete sleepers are used.
The rail is held down to the sleeper with resilient fastenings, although cut spikes are used in North American practice. For much of the 20th century, rail track used softwood timber sleepers and jointed rails, a considerable extent of this track type remains on secondary and tertiary routes; the rails were of flat bottom section fastened to the sleepers with dog spikes through a flat tie plate in North America and Australia, of bullhead section carried in cast iron chairs in British and Irish practice. The London and Scottish Railway pioneered the conversion to flat-bottomed rail and the supposed advantage of bullhead rail - that the rail could be turned over and re-used when the top surface had become worn - turned out to be unworkable in practice because the underside was ruined by fretting from the chairs. Jointed rails were used at first. However, the intrinsic weakness in resisting vertical loading results in the ballast becoming depressed and a heavy maintenance workload is imposed to prevent unacceptable geometrical defects at the joints.
The joints needed to be lubricated, wear at the fishplate mating surfaces needed to be rectified by shimming. For this reason jointed track is not financially appropriate for operated railroads. Timber sleepers are of many available timbers, are treated with creosote, Chromated copper arsenate, or other wood preservatives. Pre-stressed concrete sleepers are used where timber is scarce and where tonnage or speeds are high. Steel is used in some applications; the track ballast is customarily crushed stone, the purpose of this is to support the sleepers and allow some adjustment of their position, while allowing free drainage. A disadvantage of traditional track structures is the heavy demand for maintenance surfacing and lining to restore the desired track geometry and smoothness of vehicle running. Weakness of the subgrade and drainage deficiencies lead to heavy maintenance costs; this can be overcome by using ballastless track. In its simplest form this consists of a continuous slab of concrete with the rails supported directly on its upper surface.
There are a number of proprietary systems, variations include a continuous reinforced concrete slab, or alternatively the use of pre-cast pre-stressed concrete units laid on a base layer. Many permutations of design have been put forward. However, ballastless track has a high initial cost, in the case of existing railroads the upgrade to such requires closure of the route for a long period, its whole-life cost can be lower because of the reduction in maintenance. Ballastless track is considered for new high speed or high loading routes, in short extensions that require additional strength, or for localised replacement where there are exceptional maintenance difficulties, for example in tunnels. Most rapid transit lines and rubber-tyred metro systems use ballastless track. Early railways experimented with continuous bearing railtrack, in which the rail was supported along its length, with examples including Brunel's baulk road on the Great Western Railway, as well as use on the Newcastle and North Shields Railway, on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to a design by John Hawkshaw, elsewhere.
Continuous-bearing designs were promoted by other engineers. The system was trialled on the Baltimore and Ohio railway in the 1840s, but was found to be more expensive to maintain than rail with cross sleepers. Applications of continuously supported track include Balfour Beatty's'embedded slab track', which uses a rounded rectangular rail profile embedded in a slipformed concrete base. The'embedded rail structure', used in the Netherlands since 1976 used a conventional UIC 54 rail embedded in concrete, developed to use a'mushroom' shaped SA42 rail profile. Modern ladder track can be considered a development of baulk road. Ladder track utilizes sleepers aligned along the same direction as the rails with rung-like gauge restraining cross members. Both ballasted and ballastless types exist. Modern track uses hot-rolled steel with a profile of an asymmetrical rounded I-beam. Unlike some other uses of iron and steel, railway rails are subject to high stresses and have to be made of ve
St. Louis Regional Airport
St. Louis Regional Airport is a public airport four miles east of Alton, in Madison County, Illinois, it is in the village of Bethalto but its mailing address is East Alton. Its operations are paid for by an airport taxation district created in 1946, which collects taxes from property owners in the Madison County townships of Alton, Wood River and Fort Russell. Civic Memorial Airport opened in 1946 and received its current name in 1984; the 2,250 acres airfield sits at 544 ft MSL. It has an 8,099 by 150 ft runway that runs east–west and a 6,500 by 100 ft crosswind runway that runs north–south. With an ILS approach and tower controlled class D airspace, the facility can accommodate a Boeing 747. For the 12-month period ending April 30, 2017, the airport had 39,828 aircraft operations, an average of 109 per day: 85% general aviation, 13% air taxi, 2% military and less than 1% commercial service. In March 2018, there were 79 aircraft based at this airport: 73 single-engine, 4 multi-engine and 2 jet.
West Star Aviation is the largest fixed-base operations company at the airport. In 2008, Premiere Air changed their name to West Star aviation and the company has remained since that time; the company provides a wide range of services from engine repair and exterior paint services, avionics installation and repair, aircraft part sales, airframe inspections. Today a fair amount of air traffic and the Direct TV blimp comes for Cardinals playoffs, as the St Louis Lambert airport cannot handle the blimp. St. Louis Regional Airport, official web site FAA Airport Diagram, effective March 28, 2019 Resources for this airport: AirNav airport information for KALN ASN accident history for ALN FlightAware airport information and live flight tracker NOAA/NWS latest weather observations SkyVector aeronautical chart for KALN FAA current ALN delay information
1940 United States Census
The Sixteenth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent over the 1930 population of 123,202,624 people. The census date of record was April 1, 1940. A number of new questions were asked including where people were 5 years before, highest educational grade achieved, information about wages; this census introduced sampling techniques. Other innovations included a field test of the census in 1939; this was the first census in which every state had a population greater than 100,000. The 1940 census collected the following information: In addition, a sample of individuals were asked additional questions covering age at first marriage and other topics. Full documentation on the 1940 census, including census forms and a procedural history, is available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Following completion of the census, the original enumeration sheets were microfilmed; as required by Title 13 of the U.
S. Code, access to identifiable information from census records was restricted for 72 years. Non-personally identifiable information Microdata from the 1940 census is available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Aggregate data for small areas, together with electronic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. On April 2, 2012—72 years after the census was taken—microfilmed images of the 1940 census enumeration sheets were released to the public by the National Archives and Records Administration; the records are indexed only by enumeration district upon initial release. Official 1940 census website 1940 Census Records from the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration 1940 Federal Population Census Videos, training videos for enumerators at the U. S. National Archives Selected Historical Decennial Census Population and Housing Counts from the U. S. Census Bureau Snow, Michael S. "Why the huge interest in the 1940 Census?"
CNN. Monday April 9, 2012. 1941 U. S Census Report Contains 1940 Census results 1940 Census Questions Hosted at CensusFinder.com
1930 United States Census
The Fifteenth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau one month from April 1, 1930, determined the resident population of the United States to be 122,775,046, an increase of 13.7 percent over the 106,021,537 persons enumerated during the 1920 Census. The 1930 Census collected the following information: address name relationship to head of family home owned or rented if owned, value of home if rented, monthly rent whether owned a radio set whether on a farm sex race age marital status and, if married, age at first marriage school attendance literacy birthplace of person, their parents if foreign born: language spoken at home before coming to the U. S. year of immigration whether naturalized ability to speak English occupation and class of worker whether at work previous day veteran status if Indian: whether of full or mixed blood tribal affiliationFull documentation for the 1930 census, including census forms and enumerator instructions, is available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.
The original census enumeration sheets were microfilmed by the Census Bureau in 1949. The microfilmed census is located on 2,667 rolls of microfilm, available from the National Archives and Records Administration. Several organizations host images of the microfilmed census online, digital indices. Microdata from the 1930 census are available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Aggregate data for small areas, together with electronic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. 1930 Census Questions Hosted at CensusFinder.com 1931 U. S Census Report Contains 1930 Census results Historic US Census data 1930Census.com: 1930 United States Census for Genealogy & Family History Research 1930 Interactive US Census Find stories and more attached to names on the 1930 US census
Alton, Illinois
Alton is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, United States, about 15 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri; the population was 27,865 at the 2010 census. It is a part of the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area, it is famous for its limestone bluffs along the river north of the city, for its role preceding and during the American Civil War, as the home town of jazz musician Miles Davis and Robert Wadlow, the tallest known person in history. It was the site of the last Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate in October 1858; the former state penitentiary in Alton was used during the Civil War to hold up to 12,000 Confederate prisoners of war. Although Alton once was growing faster than its sister city of St. Louis, a coalition of St. Louis businessmen planned to build a competing town to stop its expansion and bring business to St. Louis; the result was Illinois. Many blocks of housing in Alton were built in the Victorian Queen Anne style. At the top of the hill in the commercial area, several stone churches and a fine city hall represent the city's wealth during its good times based on river traffic and shipping.
It was a commercial center for a large agricultural area. Numerous residences on hills have sweeping views of the Mississippi River; the Alton area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years before the 19th-century founding by European Americans of the modern city. Historic accounts indicate occupation of this area by the Illiniwek or Illinois Confederacy at the time of European contact. Earlier native settlement is demonstrated by archaeological artifacts and the famous prehistoric Piasa bird painted on a cliff face nearby; the image was first written about in 1673 by French missionary priest Father Jacques Marquette. Alton was developed as a river town in 1818 by Rufus Easton. Easton ran a passenger ferry service across the Mississippi River to the Missouri shore. Alton is located amid the confluence of three significant navigable rivers: the Illinois, the Mississippi, the Missouri. Alton grew into a river trading town with an industrial character; the city rises steeply from the waterfront, where massive concrete grain silos and railroad tracks were constructed in the 19th and 20th centuries to aid in shipping the area's grains and produce.
Brick commercial buildings are located throughout downtown. Once the site of several brick factories, Alton has an unusually high number of streets still paved in brick; the lower levels of Alton are subject to floods, many of which have inundated the historic downtown area. The flood levels of different dates are marked on the large grain silos, part of the Ardent Mills, near the Argosy Casino at the waterfront; the flood of 1993 is considered the worst in the last 100 years. It became an important town for abolitionists, as Illinois was a free state across from the slave state of Missouri. Pro-slavery activists lived there and slave catchers raided the city. Escaped slaves would cross the Mississippi to seek shelter in Alton, proceed to safer places through stations of the Underground Railroad. During the years before the American Civil War, several homes were equipped with tunnels and hiding places for stations on the Underground Railroad to aid slaves escaping to the North. On November 7, 1837, the abolitionist printer Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob while he tried to protect his Alton-based press from being destroyed for the third time.
He had moved from St. Louis because of opposition there, he had distributed them throughout the area. When one of the mob made a move to set the old warehouse on fire, armed with only a pistol, went outside to try to stop him; the pro-slavery man shot him dead. Lovejoy thus became the first martyr of the abolition movement. Alton became the seat of a diocese of the Catholic Church in 1857, its first bishop was French-born Henry Damian Juncker. The new diocese had 18 priests and 50,000 Catholics; when he died, 11 years the churches were 125, the priests more than 100, the Catholics 80,000. He was succeeded by Peter Joseph Baltes from James Ryan. In 1923 the bishop's seat was moved to Illinois; the Diocese of Alton, no longer a residential bishopric, is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see. Titular bishops appointed to the see have been Josu Iriondo. Congressional representatives came to Alton when they drafted the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, to permanently end slavery throughout the Union.
Alton resident and US Senator Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, co-wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. His Alton home, the Lyman Trumbull House, is a National Historic Monument. On October 15, 1858, Alton was the site of the seventh Lincoln-Douglas debate. A memorial at the site in downtown Alton features oversized statues of Lincoln and Douglas, as they would have appeared during the debate. Just two weeks into the American Civil War, Alton played an important part in the infamous Camp Jackson Affair, which in large part led to the eviction of Missouri Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson from office; the State of Missouri's nominal neutrality was tested in a conflict over the St. Louis Arsenal; the Federal Government reinforced the Arsenal's tiny garrison with several detachments, most notably a force from the 2nd Infantry under Captain Nathaniel Lyon. Concerned by widespread reports that Governor Jackson intended to use the Missouri Volunteer Militia to at
National Register of Historic Places listings in Madison County, Illinois
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Madison County, Illinois. This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Madison County, United States. Latitude and longitude coordinates are provided for many National Register districts. There are 42 properties and districts listed on the National Register in the county, including 2 National Historic Landmarks. Another property has been removed; this National Park Service list is complete through NPS recent listings posted April 12, 2019. List of National Historic Landmarks in Illinois National Register of Historic Places listings in Illinois
Commuter town
A commuter town is a populated area with residents who work elsewhere, but in which they live and sleep. The term additionally implies a community that has little commercial or industrial activity beyond a small amount of locally oriented retail business. A commuter town may be called by many other terms: "exurb", "bedroom community", "bedroom town", "bedroom suburb", "dormitory town", "dormitory suburb", or, less "dormitory village". In Japan, a commuter town may be referred to with the wasei-eigo coinage "bed town". Suburbs and commuter towns coincide, but are not synonymous. Similar to college town, resort town and mill town, the term commuter town describes the municipality's predominant economic function. A suburb, in contrast, is a community of lesser size, political power and/or commerce comparative to a nearby community, of greater economic importance. A town's economic function may change, for example when improved transport brings commuters to industrial suburbs or railway towns in search of suburban living.
Some suburbs, for example Teterboro, New Jersey and Emeryville, remained industrial when they became surrounded by commuter towns. As a general rule, suburbs are developed in areas adjacent to a main employment center, such as a town or a city, but may or may not have many jobs locally, whereas bedroom communities have few local businesses, most residents who have jobs commute to employment centers some distance away. Commuter towns may be in rural or semi-rural areas, with a ring of green space separating them from the larger city or town. Where urban sprawl and conurbation have erased clear lines among towns and cities in large metropolitan areas, this is not the case. Commuter towns can arise for a number of different reasons. Sometimes, as in Sleepy Hollow, New York or Tiburon, California, a town loses its main source of employment, leaving its residents to seek work elsewhere. In other cases, a pleasant small town, such as Warwick, New York, over time attracts more residents but not large businesses to employ them, requiring denizens to commute to employment centers.
Another cause relevant in the American South and West, is the rapid growth of once-small cities. Owing to the earlier creation of the Interstate Highway System, the greatest growth was seen by the sprawling metropolitan areas of these cities; as a result, many small cities were absorbed into the suburbs of these larger cities. However, commuter towns form when workers in a region cannot afford to live where they work and must seek residency in another town with a lower cost of living; the late 20th century dot-com bubble and United States housing bubble drove housing costs in Californian metropolitan areas to historic highs, spawning exurban growth in adjacent counties. For example, most cities in western Riverside County, California can be considered exurbs of Orange County and Los Angeles County, California; as of 2003, over 80% of the workforce of Tracy, California was employed in the San Francisco Bay Area. A related phenomenon is common in the resort towns of the American West that require large workforces, yet emphasize building larger single-family residences and other expensive housing.
For example, the resort town of Jackson, Wyoming has spawned several nearby bedroom communities, including Victor, Driggs and Alpine, where the majority of the Jackson workforce resides. On Long Island, New York, many of the workforce who serve The Hamptons reside in communities more modest and more suburban than their workplace, giving rise to a daily reverse commuter flow from more dense to less dense areas. In certain major European cities, such as Berlin and London, commuter towns were founded in response to bomb damage sustained during World War II. Residents were relocated to semi-rural areas within a 50-mile radius, firstly because much inner city housing had been destroyed, secondly in order to stimulate development away from cities as the industrial infrastructure shifted from rail to road. Around London, several towns – such as Basildon, Crawley and Stevenage – were built for this purpose by the Commission for New Towns. In some cases, commuter towns can result from negative economic conditions.
Steubenville, for instance, had its own regional identity along with neighboring Weirton, West Virginia until the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s. Combined with easier access to the much larger city of Pittsburgh via the Steubenville Pike and the Parkway West, Steubenville has shifted its marketing efforts to being a commuter town to Pittsburgh, as well as one with a lower cost of living in Ohio compared to tax-heavy Pennsylvania. In 2013, Jefferson County, Ohio was added to the Pittsburgh metropolitan area as part of its larger Combined Statistical Area. Where commuters are wealthier and small town housing markets weaker than city housing markets, the development of a bedroom community may raise local housing prices and attract upscale service businesses in a process akin to gentrification. Long-time residents may be displaced by new commuter residents due to rising house prices; this can be influenced by zoning restrictions in urbanized areas that prevent the construction of suitably cheap housing closer to places of employment.
The number of commuter towns increased in the US and the UK during the 20th century because of a trend for people to move out of the cities into the surrounding green belt. Commuter towns were developed by railway companies to create demand for their l
.svg)
