Burningbird

But what happens when Daylight Saving ends next year? Will the train run at warp speed whilst going in the opposite direction through the badlands of North Dakota to make up for the lost hour?

[15 minutes later] No, wait! An hour will be gained next year, when the clocks are put back. Now I'm hopelessly confused. Would you mind going back and starting these Train Ride and Relativity posts again? And are you taking into account the fact that you're traveling across time zones?

Actually, up here in this hemisphere, the clocks are moved back this Sunday, forward again next March, when I think the new DST goes into effect.

If I think about the time zones, Jonathon, my mind will implode.

You have barely scratched the surface of this very interesting time problem. Time zones were invented to standardize train schedules. Until the US started running long distance east-west train routes, most everyone just used local astronomical noon as their time standard.

And Einstein used train travel to originally explain the Theory of Relativity. Speaking of which, I should check this out from the library and read it on the train.

Yeah, the train really was the biggest thing ever. I remember reading some essay that said that until the train was invented, most people lived their lives in the same place, living their entire lives within a radius of a couple days horse ride. But once the train became widespread, masses of people moved far and wide, and started marrying people outside their local area. The train was asserted to be the greatest genetic mixing device ever invented.
I wish I could remember where I read about that.

In spring the trains just run late, which is no surprise to anyone who's ever ridden Amtrak.

Charles, that was Train 2.0. Train 1.0 was a bubble. Today, Train 4.5 has been deprecated in favor of SUV 3.2. Nevertheless, several legacy apps still ride on Train 4.5.

Many people predicted that Train 2.0 would "change the world," and I suppose, in a way, it did. Much of the Schlieffen Plan, upon which the German army anticipated a rapid victory in what became WW I, was based on the use of trains to move masses of troops quickly.

We know how that went.

If only they had read Clausewitz's book, The WarTrain Manifesto, they would have realized that war is merely a conversation by other means. Alas, the Prussian General Staff was attached to the comfort and status afforded to them by living in their silo. Later, the French were to make a similar mistake with Maginot Line 1.0. Blitzkrieg 2.0 merely routed around them by means of overwhelming conversational superiority and massive authenticity.

The French have a saying, La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose. Which means, roughly translated, "that damn liberal media," or words to that effect.

i worked for a contract transportation company some while back, shuttling train crews. it seems that trainmen run on tight schedules and are subject to strict working hour regs. so, if a train leaves kansas city, but takes six hours or so to leave the yard, and only makes it twenty or thirty miles past levenworth, kansas, say, by the end of the shift, the train must stop. yup, right out in the middle of nowhere, maybe ten miles or so from the nearest highway, waiting for the relief crew.

i have driven through many a pasture trying to find a freight train at 4:30 am, dark as pitch, and no lights on the train.

kind of romantic, really.

@ Dave Rogers: you are a card — watch out, you will be dealt with! Seriously, that was funny! …WarTrainManifesto — bwahahaha!

On a related (relatively speaking, of course) note, it is interesting that trains keep cropping up in this conversation. Through my erstwhile connections to the Berlin Program (formerly part of the Social Sciences Research Council in NYC program), I became aware of Palle Yourgrau's book, A World Without Time, which explains that Gödel's mathematical "proof" relating to universes ruled by the theory of relativity (hello, Albert!) determines that time is entirely fictional. Doesn't exist. As in, "sorry, you can all go home now and submit to entropy." Which is kind of funny in a weird synchronistic sort of way because on Wednesday the offspring and I were just having a serious chin-wag about whether or not time has been speeding up (son & self thought it had), with daughter probing relentlessly as to how we would know if indeed it had… Ugh. It was weird and slightly depressing — all I'd done was pick them up from a workshop on Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for chrissakes, and next thing I knew, we were taking a train — down the tubes…!

As for you, Shelley, stuck in that no-man's land of non-existant time on a train: pack an elegant flat flask of whiskey. Flat objects are known to withstand the rigors of both standardisation as well as time travel with elegance and ease. Cheers!

Those working hours regs can leave the passengers in some strange places when things are seriously behind schedule. I once spent two hours waiting for relief crew in the middle of the night somewhere in Ohio during a Chicago to New York trip. The train pulled up short of a crossing, and the crew got out and left. On their way out they set the heat and lights to standby. Did I mention this was the day after the 1978 blizzard? The total trip was about 36 hours, after we left Chicago 2 days late.

Sounds like the perfect beginning to a Agatha Christy novel…

Yeah something like The Amtrak October Mystery