" THREE GIANT STEPS " 1957 NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD CENTRALIZED TRAFFIC CONTROL XD14274
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
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“Three Giant Steps” (1957) is a black-and-white promotional film made by New York Central Railroad that details the “three giant steps” that the company undertook to optimize their freight and passenger services. Established in 1853, New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The three improvements or "giant steps" undertaken by New York Central included: Centralized traffic control (CTC) railway signaling between Buffalo and Cleveland, the opening of an automated frontier hump yard in Buffalo, and the introduction of the Flexi-Van service.
Introduction: Title text flashes across screen, train horn blows as passenger train speeds along rail track (0:08). Montage shots of trains speeding towards camera along various tracks while narrator begins introduction; New York Central EMD E7 passenger diesel locomotives (0:36). Centralized traffic control: close-up of knobs, switches on switchboard before scene changes to wide shot of railroad employee sitting in front of large switchboard, New York Central Synchro Scan System (1:35). Camera pans track diagram included on panel of New York Central Synchro Scan System operating in Eerie, Pennsylvania; Allows dispatcher to have control of rails of entire territory between Buffalo, New York and Cleveland, Ohio (2:07). Close-up of melting clump of snow on rail after dispatcher turned on electric snow melters (2:26). Automatic recorder on the control machine; Close-up as pen traces lines on chart representing different trains (2:39). Example of dispatcher handling typical scenario on control system: Shots of freight train and Empire State Express passenger train barreling along snow-lined track, dispatcher turns knob on switchboard to redirect trains and avoid traffic (2:56). Close-up interior view of switchboard mechanisms, electronics at work after dispatcher turns knob (3:40). Aerial view as Empire State Express moves from track 1 to track 2 and passes slower freight train; Montage scenes of passenger and freight trains (3:51-5:16). Old method of classifying freight cars by weight (5:18). Aerial view New York Central Buffalo Yards “The Frontier Yards” (5:32). Switch man sits in office in front of switchboard and uses switches to electrically route incoming trains to proper track (6:09). Shippers information read off as cars pass, recorded at central car record office using 1947 Gray Audograph Dictating Machine (6:30). Two New York Central train yard employees listen to recorded information at desk and write out switching lists; Typewriter types out information (6:43). Classification Yard: Locomotive pulls cars back from receiving yard and push them onto classification tracks (6:54). Hump conductor sits before switch board, demos how to switch car to any of the 63 tracks; Close-up of board with buttons corresponding to illuminated track numbers (7:19). Electronic automation: Shot of electrical memory system which controls switching tracks, car retarders, steel jaws (7:34). Hopper Truck Lines Freight truck drives over highway overpass as another drives along road below (9:23). Silver freight Flexi-Van car (9:28). Delivery of Fruehauf Trailer Corporation manufactured Flexi-Vans to train yard; Demonstration of Flexi-Van transferred onto prototype of New York Central Flexi-Van flatcar (9:37). Close-up as self-locking hydraulic hoist attached to deck takes van’s weight and lowers it from either side of flat car (10:51). Rail yard employee helps adjust front and rear of van before it locks into place automatically (11:03). Flexi-Van now attached to trailer truck drives out of rail yard (11:09). Narrator closing words, train horn blows as montage of shots of New York Central passenger and freight trains speed along railway (11:31). New York Central logo, closing credits, film ends (11:57).
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Lots of beautiful first generation diesels in this film. I've never heard of the Flexi-Van service before. I'll bet the poor guy pushing with all of his might to rotate the container wishes he'd never heard of it either.
Thanks for your comment and for being a sub!
Just imagine doing that for eight hours, he dosent.want any over time
I saw lots of those Flexi-vans on NYC in the 1960's. Didn't know one guy could rotate it on the car. I reckon they were just demonstrating that one [straining] guy could rotate the container; probably not how it was routinely done!
It's interesting to see that NYC was *ALMOST THERE* with containerization.
The most important part of containerization is getting the shipping and trucking industry to standardize on your design. That's why they are international standard containers. is there any chance that the world would adopt their proprietary container system, or that they would allow it? Although I'm sure this was one of the things that directly led to that result. I don't think they just gave up on it, it wasn't long after this that standard containers were adopted, although it took a while for them to really take over. Who is to say that the international container wasn't directly result of this, an adaptation of the idea with improvement m
@@justforever96 It wasn't. Containers came about to get cargo on and off ships quickly, specifically to get military cargo from the US to Viet Nam during the war there. This was strictly a US effort, led by one man, as I recall. The current international standards were initially just a rubber stamp on what had already been designed for one shipping line. So yes, the world adopted a proprietary container shape. While the containers are specified in metric dimensions everywhere but in the US, the containers are marked as 20 foot, 40 foot, and 53 foot. The metric dimensions are just the metric representations of the English dimensions.
During this era various railroads were trying piggyback, roadrailer, and about three other forms of semi-containerization. Several of them had promise, and I think one of them is still in partial use on the descendent of whichever Eastern railroad originally invented it. However, flat cars and well cars to take standard containers have vastly surpassed the cargo carrying capacity of any attempts the railroads came up with.
These vintage films are rather entertaining with their old-style narration drama. I found it interesting that the primary topic is about newly installed CTC, Centralized Traffic Control. I grew up next to the NYC mainline in upstate New York. I was just a tot when four tracks were changed to two main tracks with CTC which was claimed to handle more traffic, more epediently. A large signal bridge (originally spanning four tracks) and crossovers near our house provided considerable fascination for me as a child. I saw lots of those Flexi-van cars on the NYC back in the 1960's.
It's important to remain on the right side of the tracks.
Yessir!
CTC allows trains to utilize either track, traffic depending. That's the beauty of it. Still in use!
Hmmm maybe I should buy stock in New York Central
Too late.
A lot of good information, thanks.
Speed of the Freight train has almost doubled because they can now use passenger tracks
This was the beginning of the end for American passenger trains. Now freight has priority on passenger tracks
Originally there were two reasons for separate passenger and freight tracks. The first was obviously so that passengers could run around freight easily. The second was that freight is heavier, and it tears up the track a whole lot quicker. This doesn't hurt the freight that much, since it is relatively slow, but it pretty quickly makes the track almost unusable for passenger traffic at any decent speed, since the cars bob, dip, and weave all over the place from the ruts in the track profile. The people in the back rooms knew this very well, but the people in the front office didn't give a damn, as they already saw that passenger traffic was going away.
I dunno about that Flexi-Van as it appeared to put a whole lot of stress on the front and rear of the trailer.
3:50: Causing the Empire State Express to switch tracks was wrong, since the train would have to slow down to 45 mph to negotiate the crossover turnouts and pass the freight. Better to have the freight do all that work, and the Empire State wouldn't have lost time.
Agreed.
The Vanderbilt's would be proud of this.
@00:47 Engine, power unit, power unit, engine
Or in the terms of the time, and ABBA consist.
It seems that "flexi-van" is more efficient than today's container yards? No? Enlighten me please.
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coltrane reference
1957 automation, then total bankruptcy within the next 5 years or so for the NYC System.
3:14 Nowadays it would be "To avoid stopping the freight, we pulled the passenger train to the side to allow the freight train to pass despite a (never enforced) law prohibiting that making the passenger train 4 hours late since this happened several other times on its journey."
This is now called the MTA Metro North Railroad (at least in the New York City Area) and Amtrak.
thumb 👍
'42,000 lbs', What's the point in having 'tons'?
It's more precise, 21T could be 42,000lb or, 41,900 or 42,173.
Highway/truck regulations are noted in pounds, not tons.
"A 6 and 1 quarter million dollar project". In today's world, that project would be budgeted at 6.25 billion, and end up costing twice as much due to budget overruns. Progress!
11years later they took over Pennsylvania rail road
Edit…..11 years later they merged with PRR to avoid bankruptcy which resulted in a financial catastrophe