Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Locomotive
A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is rather referred to as multiple units, motor coaches, railcars or power cars. Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, push-pull operation has become common, where the train may have a locomotive at the front, at the rear, or at each end; the word locomotive originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus "place", the Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in 1814 to distinguish between self-propelled and stationary steam engines. Prior to locomotives, the motive force for railways had been generated by various lower-technology methods such as human power, horse power, gravity or stationary engines that drove cable systems. Few such systems are still in existence today. Locomotives may generate their power from fuel, or they may take power from an outside source of electricity.
It is common to classify locomotives by their source of energy. The common ones include: A steam locomotive is a locomotive whose primary power source is a steam engine; the most common form of steam locomotive contains a boiler to generate the steam used by the engine. The water in the boiler is heated by burning combustible material – coal, wood, or oil – to produce steam; the steam moves reciprocating pistons which are connected to the locomotive's main wheels, known as the "drivers". Both fuel and water supplies are carried with the locomotive, either on the locomotive itself or in wagons called "tenders" pulled behind; the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in 1802. It was constructed for the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire in the United Kingdom though no record of it working there has survived. On 21 February 1804, the first recorded steam-hauled railway journey took place as another of Trevithick's locomotives hauled a train from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, to Abercynon in South Wales.
Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. The design incorporated a number of important innovations including the use of high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency. In 1812, Matthew Murray's twin-cylinder rack locomotive Salamanca first ran on the edge-railed rack-and-pinion Middleton Railway. Another well-known early locomotive was Puffing Billy, built 1813–14 by engineer William Hedley for the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne; this locomotive is the oldest preserved, is on static display in the Science Museum, London. George Stephenson built Locomotion No. 1 for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the north-east of England, the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829, his son Robert built The Rocket in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Rocket was entered into, won, the Rainhill Trials; this success led to the company emerging as the pre-eminent early builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the UK, US and much of Europe.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, built by Stephenson, opened a year making exclusive use of steam power for passenger and goods trains. The steam locomotive remained by far the most common type of locomotive until after World War II. Steam locomotives are less efficient than modern diesel and electric locomotives, a larger workforce is required to operate and service them. British Rail figures showed that the cost of crewing and fuelling a steam locomotive was about two and a half times larger than the cost of supporting an equivalent diesel locomotive, the daily mileage they could run was lower. Between about 1950 and 1970, the majority of steam locomotives were retired from commercial service and replaced with electric and diesel-electric locomotives. While North America transitioned from steam during the 1950s, continental Europe by the 1970s, in other parts of the world, the transition happened later. Steam was a familiar technology that used widely-available fuels and in low-wage economies did not suffer as wide a cost disparity.
It continued to be used in many countries until the end of the 20th century. By the end of the 20th century the only steam power remaining in regular use around the world was on heritage railways. Internal combustion locomotives use an internal combustion engine, connected to the driving wheels by a transmission, they keep the engine running at a near-constant speed whether the locomotive is stationary or moving. Kerosene locomotives use kerosene as the fuel, they were the world's first oil locomotives, preceding diesel and other oil locomotives by some years. The first known kerosene locomotive was a draisine built by Daimler in 1887. A kerosene locomotive was built in 1894 by the Priestman Brothers of Kingston upon Hull for use on Hull docks; this locomotive was built using a 12 hp double-acting marine type engine, running at 300 rpm, mounted on a 4-wheel wagon chassis. It was only able to haul one loaded wagon at a time, due to its low power output, was not a great success; the first successful kerosene locomotive was "Lachesis" built by Richard Hornsby & Sons Ltd. and delivered to Woolwich Arsenal railway in 1896.
The company built a series of kerosene locomotives between 1896 and 1903, for use by the British military. Petrol locomotives use petrol as their fuel. Most petrol locomotives built were petrol-mechanical, using a mechanical transmission to deliver the power output of the engine t
Derby Works
The Derby railway works comprised a number of British manufacturing facilities designing and building locomotives and rolling stock in Derby, England. The first of these was a group of three maintenance sheds opened around 1840 behind Derby station; this developed into a manufacturing facility called the Midland Railway Locomotive Works, known locally as "the loco" and in 1873 manufacturing was split into locomotive and rolling stock manufacture, with rolling stock work transferred to a new facility, Derby Carriage & Wagon Works. From its earliest days, it had carried out research and development in a number of areas, in 1933 the London and Scottish Railway opened the LMS Scientific Research Laboratory. Around 1964, this became part of a new British Rail Research Division, based in the purpose-built Railway Technical Centre, which housed the Department of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering and the headquarters of British Rail Engineering Limited. Around 1840, the North Midland Railway, the Midland Counties Railway and the Birmingham and Derby Railway set up workshops to the rear of Derby station.
Although the Midland Counties had an engine house at Nottingham, the main facilities for all three lines appear to have been at least, those at Derby. That for the Birmingham and Derby was next to its line, near London Road, it was about 140 feet long and 43 feet wide, with three lines and three wide archways at its entrance, supporting a water tank. In one corner was a smithy; the Midland Counties' shed was about 800 feet long to the north of the site. Adjacent to it were water and coke facilities, locomotive repair workshops; the North Midland's became a full repair facility, with a smithy and other machine tools. These were associated with what is believed to be the first Roundhouse, designed by Francis Thompson. On each side of it, in a vee, were workshops for locomotive and rolling stock repair. In 1841, problems were becoming apparent with the heat of the exhaust gases through the fireboxes of the locomotives, the North Midland works assisted George Stephenson in the design of his "Long Boiler locomotive" In the same year, the Midland Counties locomotive "Bee" was fitted with'Samuel Hills Smoke Consuming Apparatus' in an attempt to conform to the Government's insistence that they should "consume their own smoke."
This experimentation was carried on with the use of a brick arch in the firebox to use the cheaper coal instead of coke, but it was unsuccessful. When the three companies merged in 1844 to form the Midland Railway, Derby became its headquarters and the workshops merged to become the Midland Railway Locomotive Works; the immediate task was to achieve some standardisation in the various locomotives that it had inherited. Locomotives at that time were designed and built by manufacturers who might be lacking in actual operating experience with their products; the first Locomotive and Carriage Superintendent was Matthew Kirtley who persuaded various manufacturers to build to his own design and in 1849 50 six-coupled goods engines were delivered. After improving the workshops and facilities, including a second roundhouse in 1847, he persuaded the directors that the railway should build its own engines. New building began in 1851 with passenger engines to the "Jenny Lind" pattern, more standard goods.
He produced a large "single" with six foot six inch driving wheels. Throughout its existence the Midland never became self-sufficient having its locos built by private contractors to its own designs. There was some resistance on the part of Sharp Stewart and Stephenson, who quoted over-long delivery times, so that Kirtley had to accept the maker's own designs; these were good enough, that Fowler built some more to a similar pattern. In 1861 he built four 0-6-0 banking engines for the Lickey Incline with four-foot drivers instead of the usual five feet. Kirtley's first 2-4-0 was a rebuilt 2-2-2 but he went on to build six for use to King's Cross 15 more. A further, much larger, roundhouse was built in 1852, followed by a large rectangular engine shed with two turntables in 1890; the original North Midland workshop, which by had become offices, was raised by one storey in 1859-60, the clock tower being increased in height accordingly. A long footbridge was added from the entrance door to the front of the station, of which only a fragment remains today.
A third floor was added in 1893. Another of Kirtley's achievements in 1859 was, at last, to solve the problem of coal burning, by combining the brick arch with a firehole door deflector plate and a blower to increase the draught. Research into track wear was carried out by Robert Forester Mushet, who produced the first double-headed rail using Bessemer steel. Whereas wrought iron rails lasted six months, a length of steel rail laid near Derby station 1857 was still in use in 1873. Kirtley introduced a system of templates and gauges based on the Whitworth system. Meanwhile, wrought iron axles failures were a problem. In 1870-1871, Kirtley began a programme of research which resulted in the introduction of steel. By the end of the 1860s the works had expanded to such an extent, that he was considering reorganising it. Kirtley died in office in 1873 leaving a respectable legacy of development and sound locomotives, some of which lasted 80 years; the works reorganisation was completed in 1887 by his successor Samuel W. Johnson, the carriage and wagon works coming under the control of Thomas Gethyn Clayton.
In addition the works took over the old Derby Gas Company works. Johnson continued
CN Tower
The CN Tower is a 553.3 m-high concrete communications and observation tower located in Downtown Toronto, Canada. Built on the former Railway Lands, it was completed in 1976, its name "CN" referred to Canadian National, the railway company that built the tower. Following the railway's decision to divest non-core freight railway assets prior to the company's privatization in 1995, it transferred the tower to the Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation responsible for real estate development; the CN Tower held the record for the world's tallest free-standing structure for 32 years until 2007 when it was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa and was the world's tallest tower until 2009 when it was surpassed by the Canton Tower. It is now the ninth tallest free-standing structure in the world and remains the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. In 1995, the CN Tower was declared one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers, it belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers.
It is a signature icon of Toronto's skyline and attracts more than two million international visitors annually. The original concept of the CN Tower originated in 1968 when the Canadian National Railway wanted to build a large TV and radio communication platform to serve the Toronto area, as well as demonstrate the strength of Canadian industry and CN in particular; these plans evolved over the next few years, the project became official in 1972. The tower would have been part of Metro Centre, a large development south of Front Street on the Railway Lands, a large railway switching yard, being made redundant by newer yards outside the city. Key project team members were NCK Engineering as structural engineer; as Toronto grew during the late 1960s and early 1970s, multiple skyscrapers were constructed in the downtown core, most notably First Canadian Place. The reflective nature of the new buildings compromised the quality of broadcast signals necessitating new, higher antennas that were at least 300 m tall.
At the time, most data communications took place over point-to-point microwave links, whose dish antennae covered the roofs of large buildings. As each new skyscraper was added to the downtown, former line-of-sight links were no longer possible. CN intended to rent "hub" space for microwave links, visible from any building in the Toronto area; the CN Tower can be seen from at least as far away as Kennedy Street in Aurora, Ontario 40 km to the north. It is viewable to the naked eye from 60 km east of Toronto in Oshawa, several points along the Niagara Escarpment west of Toronto in Hamilton, 48 km to the south from Fort Niagara State Park in the U. S. state of New York. The original plan for the tower envisioned a tripod consisting of three independent cylindrical "pillars" linked at various heights by structural bridges. Had it been built, this design would have been shorter, with the metal antenna located where the concrete section between the main level and the SkyPod lies today; as the design effort continued, it evolved into the current design with a single continuous hexagonal core to the SkyPod, with three support legs blended into the hexagon below the main level, forming a large Y-shape structure at the ground level.
The idea for the main level in its current form evolved around this time, but the Space Deck was not part of the plans until some time later. One engineer in particular felt that visitors would feel the higher observation deck would be worth paying extra for, the costs in terms of construction were not prohibitive, it was some time around this point that it was realized that the tower could become the world's tallest structure, plans were changed to incorporate subtle modifications throughout the structure to this end. Construction on the CN Tower began on February 6, 1973, with massive excavations at the tower base for the foundation. By the time the foundation was complete, 56,000 t of earth and shale were removed to a depth of 15 m in the centre, a base incorporating 7,000 m3 of concrete with 450 t of rebar and 36 t of steel cable had been built to a thickness of 6.7 m. This portion of the construction was rapid, with only four months needed between the start and the foundation being ready for construction on top.
To create the main support pillar, workers constructed a hydraulically raised slipform at the base. This was a unprecedented engineering feat on its own, consisting of a large metal platform that raised itself on jacks at about 6 m per day as the concrete below set. Concrete was poured continuously by a team of 1,532 people until February 22, 1974, during which it had become the tallest structure in Canada, surpassing the built Inco Superstack in Sudbury, built using similar methods. In total, the tower contains 40,500 m3 of concrete, all of, mixed on-site in order to ensure batch consistency. Through the pour, the vertical accuracy of the tower was maintained by comparing the slip form's location to massive plumb bobs hanging from it, observed by small telescopes from the ground. Over the height of the tower, it varies from true vertical accuracy by only 29 mm. In August 1974, construction of the main level commenced. Using 45 hydraulic jacks attached to cables strung from a temporary steel crown anchored to the top of the tower, twelve giant steel
Rail transport
Rail transport is a means of transferring of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails known as tracks. It is commonly referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks consist of steel rails, installed on ties and ballast, on which the rolling stock fitted with metal wheels, moves. 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 rail transport system encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars can be coupled into longer trains; the operation is carried out by a railway company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway electrification system or produce their own power by diesel engines.
Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system. Railways are a safe land transport system. Railway transport is capable of high levels of passenger and cargo utilization and energy efficiency, but is less flexible and more capital-intensive than road transport, when lower traffic levels are considered; the oldest known, man/animal-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC in Greece. Rail transport commenced in mid 16th century in Germany in the form of horse-powered funiculars and wagonways. Modern rail transport commenced with the British development of the steam locomotives in the early 19th century, thus the railway system in Great Britain is the oldest in the world. Built by George Stephenson and his son Robert's company Robert Stephenson and Company, the Locomotion No. 1 is the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. George Stephenson built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use only the steam locomotives all the time, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which opened in 1830.
With steam engines, one could construct mainline railways, which were a key component of the Industrial Revolution. Railways reduced the costs of shipping, allowed for fewer lost goods, compared with water transport, which faced occasional sinking of ships; the change from canals to railways allowed for "national markets" in which prices varied little from city to city. The spread of the railway network and the use of railway timetables, led to the standardisation of time in Britain based on Greenwich Mean Time. Prior to this, major towns and cities varied their local time relative to GMT; the invention and development of the railway in the United Kingdom was one of the most important technological inventions of the 19th century. The world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1863. In the 1880s, electrified trains were introduced, leading to electrification of tramways and rapid transit systems. Starting during the 1940s, the non-electrified railways in most countries had their steam locomotives replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, with the process being complete by the 2000s.
During the 1960s, electrified high-speed railway systems were introduced in Japan and in some other countries. Many countries are in the process of replacing diesel locomotives with electric locomotives due to environmental concerns, a notable example being Switzerland, which has electrified its network. Other forms of guided ground transport outside the traditional railway definitions, such as monorail or maglev, have been tried but have seen limited use. Following a decline after World War II due to competition from cars, rail transport has had a revival in recent decades due to road congestion and rising fuel prices, as well as governments investing in rail as a means of reducing CO2 emissions in the context of concerns about global warming; the history of rail transport began in the 6th century BC in Ancient Greece. It can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of track material and motive power used. Evidence indicates that there was 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos paved trackway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece from around 600 BC.
Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route. The Diolkos was in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century AD; the paved trackways were later built in Roman Egypt. In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria; the line used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel. The line still exists and is operational, although in updated form and is the oldest operational railway. Wagonways using wooden rails, hauled by horses, started appearing in the 1550s to facilitate the transport of ore tubs to and from mines, soon became popular in Europe; such an operation was illustrated in Germany in 1556 by Georgius Agricola in his work De re metallica. This line used "Hund" carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it going the right way.
The miners called the wagons Hunde from the noise. There are many references to their use in central Europe in the 16th century; such a transport system was used by German miners at Cal
Diesel locomotive
A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotive have been developed, differing in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels. Early internal combusition locomotives and railcars used gasoline as their fuel. Dr. Rudolf Diesel patented his first compression ignition engine in 1898, steady improvements in the design of diesel engines reduced their physical size and improved their power-to-weight ratio to a point where one could be mounted in a locomotive. Internal combustion engines only operate efficiently within a limited torque range, while low power gasoline engines can be coupled to a mechanical transmission, the more powerful diesel engines required the development of new forms of transmission; the first successful diesel engines used diesel–electric transmissions, by 1925 a small number of diesel locomotives of 600 hp were in service in the United States. In 1930, Armstrong Whitworth of the United Kingdom delivered two 1,200 hp locomotives using Sulzer-designed engines to Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway of Argentina.
In 1933, diesel-electric technology developed by Maybach was used propel the DRG Class SVT 877, a high speed intercity two-car set, went into series production with other streamlined car sets in Germany starting in 1935. In the USA, diesel-electric propulsion was brought to high speed mainline passenger service in late 1934 through the research and development efforts of General Motors from 1930–34 and advances in lightweight carbody design by the Budd Company; the economic recovery from the Second World War saw the widespread adoption of diesel locomotives in many countries. They offered greater flexibility and performance than steam locomotives, as well as lower operating and maintenance costs. Diesel–hydraulic transmissions were introduced in the 1950s, but from the 1970s onwards diesel–electric transmission has dominated; the earliest recorded example of the use of an internal combustion engine in a railway locomotive is the prototype designed by William Dent Priestman, examined by Sir William Thomson in 1888 who described it as a " mounted upon a truck, worked on a temporary line of rails to show the adaptation of a petroleum engine for locomotive purposes.".
In 1894, a 20 hp two axle machine built by Priestman Brothers. In 1896 an oil-engined railway locomotive was built for the Royal Arsenal, England, in 1896, using an engine designed by Herbert Akroyd Stuart, it was not a diesel because it used a hot bulb engine but it was the precursor of the diesel. Following the expiration of Dr. Rudolf Diesel's patent in 1912, his engine design was applied to marine propulsion and stationary applications. However, the massiveness and poor power-to-weight ratio of these early engines made them unsuitable for propelling land-based vehicles. Therefore, the engine's potential as a railroad prime mover was not recognized; this changed as development reduced the weight of the engine. In 1906, Rudolf Diesel, Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing Diesel engines since 1898; the Prussian State Railways ordered a diesel locomotive from the company in 1909, after test runs between Winterthur and Romanshorn the diesel–mechanical locomotive was delivered in Berlin in September 1912.
The world's first diesel-powered locomotive was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railroad in Switzerland, but was not a commercial success. During further test runs in 1913 several problems were found. After the First World War broke out in 1914, all further trials were stopped; the locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was 883 kW with a maximum speed of 100 km/h. Small numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through the mid-1920s. Adolphus Busch purchased the American manufacturing rights for the diesel engine in 1898 but never applied this new form of power to transportation, he founded the Busch-Sulzer company in 1911. Only limited success was achieved in the early twentieth century with internal combustion engined railcars, due, in part, to difficulties with mechanical drive systems. General Electric entered the railcar market in the early twentieth century, as Thomas Edison possessed a patent on the electric locomotive, his design being a type of electrically propelled railcar.
GE built its first electric locomotive prototype in 1895. However, high electrification costs caused GE to turn its attention to internal combustion power to provide electricity for electric railcars. Problems related to co-coordinating the prime mover and electric motor were encountered due to limitations of the Ward Leonard current control system, chosen. A significant breakthrough occurred in 1914, when Hermann Lemp, a GE electrical engineer and patented a reliable direct current electrical control system. Lemp's design used a single lever to control both engine and generator in a coordinated fashion, was the prototype for all internal combustion–electric drive control systems. In 1917–18, GE produced three experimental diesel–electric locomotives using Lemp's control design, the first known to be built in the United States. Following this development, the 1923 Kaufman Act banned steam locomotives from New York City because of severe pollution problems; the response to this law was to electrify high-traffic rail lines.
However, electrification was u
Michigan Central Railroad
The Michigan Central Railroad was incorporated in 1846 to establish rail service between Detroit, Michigan and St. Joseph, Michigan; the railroad operated in the states of Michigan and Illinois in the United States, the province of Ontario in Canada. After about 1867 the railroad was controlled by the New York Central Railroad, which became part of Penn Central and Conrail. After the 1998 Conrail breakup Norfolk Southern Railway now owns much of the former Michigan Central trackage. At the end of 1925 MC operated 4139 miles of track. Michigan Central RailroadBattle Creek and Bay City Railroad 1889 Buchanan and St. Joseph River Railroad 1897 Central Railroad of Michigan 1837-1846 Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad 1831-1837 Detroit and Bay City Railroad 1881 Detroit and Charlevoix Railroad 1916 Frederick and Charlevoix Railroad 1901 Detroit River Tunnel Company Railroad 1918 Jackson and Saginaw Railroad 1871 Amboy and Traverse Bay Railroad 1866 Grand River Valley Railroad 1870 Joliet and Northern Indiana Railroad 1851 Kalamazoo and South Haven Railroad 1870 Michigan Air Line Railway 1870 Michigan Midland and Canada Railroad 1878 Saginaw Bay and Northwestern Railroad 1884 Pinconning Railroad 1879 Glencoe and Lake Shore Railroad 1878 St. Louis and Battle Creek Railroad 1889 The line between Detroit and St. Joseph, Michigan was planned in 1830 to provide freight service between Detroit and Chicago by train to St. Joseph and via boat service on to Chicago.
The Detroit & St. Joseph Railroad was chartered in 1831 with a capital of $1,500,000; the railroad began construction on May 18, 1836, starting at "King's Corner" in Detroit, the name by which the southeast corner of Jefferson and Woodward Avenue was known. Note that this is not the location of Michigan Central Station, which replaced this building; the small private organization, known as the Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad ran into problems securing cheap land in the private market, abandonment of the project was discussed; the City of Detroit invested $50,000 in the project. The State of Michigan bailed out the railroad in 1837 by purchasing it and investing $5,000,000; the now state-owned company was renamed the Central Railroad of Michigan. By 1840 the railroad was again out of money and had only completed track between Detroit and Dexter, Michigan. In 1846 the state sold the railroad to the newly incorporated Michigan Central corporation for $2,000,000. By this time the railroad had reached a distance 143.16 miles.
The new private corporation had committed to complete the railroad with T rail of not less than sixty pounds to the yard and to replace the poorly built rails between Kalamazoo and Detroit with similar quality rail, as the state-built rail was of low quality. The new owners met this obligation by building the rest of the line some 74.84 miles to the shores of Lake Michigan by 1849. However, rather than go to St. Joseph, instead they went to New Buffalo; this was. This involved passing through two other states and getting leave from two state legislatures to do so. To facilitate this process, they bought the Joliet and Northern Indiana Railroad in 1851, thus they reached Michigan City, Indiana by 1850 and finished the line to Kensington, IL in 1852, using Illinois Central trackage rights to downtown Chicago. The completed railroad was 270 miles in length; the Michigan Central Railroad operated passenger trains between Chicago and Detroit. These trains ranged from locals to the Wolverine. In 1904, MCR began a long-term lease of Canada Southern Railway, which operated the most direct route between Detroit and New York.
CSR's mainline cut between Windsor and Fort Erie. The new service, known as the Canada Division Passenger Service, saw a major surge beginning at the start of the 1920s. Between 1920 and 1922, the legendary Wolverine passenger train operated in two sections, five days per week along CSR's mainline. In the summer of 1923, the eastbound Wolverine began running from Detroit to Buffalo without any scheduled stops in Canada, making the trip in 4 hours and 50 minutes, an unprecedented achievement. During the same summer, the Canada Division was moving 2,300 through passengers per day. By the end of the decade, a fleet of 205 J-1 class Hudson – one of the most powerful locomotives for passenger service yet designed – was hauling passengers along the CSR mainline. However, by the 1930s the Wolverine was making stops in the Canadian section of the route. By the late 1940s, the Empire State Express passed from Buffalo into Southwestern Ontario, however, it terminated at Detroit. While Michigan Central was an independent subsidiary of the New York Central System, passenger trains were staged from Illinois Central's Central Station as a tenant.
When MC operations were integrated into NYC in the 1950s, trains were re-deployed to NYC's LaSalle Street Station home, where other NYC trains such as the 20th Century Limited were staged. IC won because the MC had a lease that ran for a few more years; the MC route from Chicago to Porter, Indiana, is intact. The Kensington Interchange, shared with the South Shore Line, was cut out; these tracks now belong to Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad, are overgrown stub tracks ending short of the interchange. Some trackage around the Indiana Harbor Belt's Gibson Yard has been removed; the MC's South Water Street freight trackage in downtown Chicago is g
