Copyright©

All post are researched from google, wikipedia and yahoo and the blogger tried to revise them.
*Some post are written by the author.

All post are property of the blogger wHinstar ©.

All photos are property of the blogger wHinstar ©.


Copying without notice from the copywriter, duplication and unlawful use of the post/photos is punishable by law.

Linggo, Hulyo 10, 2011

RAILWAY SYSTEM


Ancient Times

  • ca. 600 BC - A basic form of the railway, the rutway, existed in ancient Greek and Roman times, the most important being the ship trackway Diolkos across the Isthmus of Corinth. Measuring between 6 and 8.5 km, remaining in regular and frequent service for at least 650 years, and being open to all on payment, it constituted even a public railway, a concept which according to Lewis did not recur until around 1800.The Diolkos was reportedly used until at least the middle of the 1st century AD, after which no more written references appear.

16-17th century

  • 1550 - Hand propelled tubs known as "hunds" undoubtedly existed in the provinces surrounding/forming modern day Germany by the mid 16th century having been in proven use since the mid-15th century and possibly earlier. This technology was brought to the UK by German miners working in the Mines Royal at various sites in the English Lake District near Keswick (Now in Cumbria).
  • 1603/4 - Between October 1603 and the end of September 1604, Huntingdon Beaumont, partner of the landowner; Sir Percival Willoughby, built the first recorded above ground early railway/wagonway. It was approximately two miles in length, running from mines at Strelley to Wollaton in Nottinghamshire, England. It is known as the Wollaton Wagonway. Beaumont built three further wagonways shortly after, near Blyth in Northumberland related to the coal and salt trade. Shortly after the Wollaton Wagonway was built other wagonways are recorded at Broseley near Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Further wagonways emerged in the English North East.
  • 1798 - Lake Lock Railroad, arguably the world's first public railway, opened in 1798 to carry coals from the Outwood area to the Aire and Calder navigation at Lake Lock.

19th century

The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska[1][2] (via Ogden, Utah, and Sacramento, California) with the Pacific Ocean at Oakland, California on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay opposite San Francisco. By linking with the existing railway network of the Eastern United States, the road thus connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States by rail for the first time. The line was popularly known as the Overland Route after the principal passenger rail service that operated over the length of the line through the end of 1962.[3]

· The construction and operation of the line was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War. The Congress supported it with 30-year U.S. government bonds and extensive land grants of government-owned land. Completion of the railroad was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line. It was one of the crowning achievements in the crossing of plains and high mountains westward by the Union Pacific and eastward by the Central Pacific. Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, Utah, the road established a mechanized transcontinental transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West.

· The transcontinental railroad is considered one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century. It is considered to surpass the building of the Erie Canal in the 1820s and the crossing of the Isthmus of Panama by the Panama Railroad in 1855. It served as a vital link for trade, commerce and travel that joined the eastern and western halves of the late 19th-century United States. The transcontinental railroad slowly ended most of the far slower and more hazardous stagecoach lines and wagon trains that had preceded it. The railroads led to the decline of traffic on the Oregon and California Trail which had populated much of the west. They provided much faster, safer and cheaper (8 days and about $65 economy) transport east and west for people and goods across half a continent.

· The railroads' sales of land-grant lots, and the transport provided for timber and crops, led to the rapid settling of the supposed "Great American Desert". The main workers on the Union Pacific were many Army veterans and Irish immigrants. Most of the engineers and supervisors were Army veterans who had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the American Civil War. The Central Pacific, facing a labor shortage in the West, relied on mostly Chinese immigrant laborers but about one tenth were Irish. They did prodigious work building the line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and across Nevada to the meeting in Utah.

· Pacific Railroad Bond, City and County of San Francisco, 1865

· The railroad was motivated in part to bind the eastern and western states of the United States together. The Central Pacific started work in 1863. Due to competition with the War for workers, rails, ties, railroad engines and supplies, the Union Pacific RR did not start construction until July 1865. Completion of the railroad substantially accelerated populating the West, while contributing to the decline of territory controlled by the Native Americans in these regions. In 1879, the Supreme Court of the United States formally established, in its decision regarding Union Pacific Railroad vs. United States (99 U.S. 402), the official "date of completion" of the Transcontinental Railroad as November 6, 1869.

· The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroad combined operations in 1870 and formally merged in 1885. Union Pacific originally bought the Southern Pacific in 1901, but in 1913 was forced to divest it. In 1996 the Union Pacific acquired the Southern Pacific. Much of the original right-of-way is still in use today and owned by the Union Pacific.

· Needing rapid communication, the companies built telegraph lines along the railroad rights of way as the track was laid. The linkage made these lines easier to protect and maintain than the original First Transcontinental Telegraph lines, which went over much of the original routes of the Mormon Trail and the Central Nevada Route through central Utah and Nevada. They soon superseded the earlier lines, which were mostly abandoned.

Rail transport in the Philippines is a growing means of transportation for passengers and cargo in the country. Such means of transportation are used typically for rapid transport within major cites as well as long distance travel. The Philippine railway network consists of one commuter rail service provided by the Philippine National Railways (PNR), and a rapid transit system operated by the Light Rail Transit Authority and Metro Rail Transit Corporation. All three services are integrated through the Strong Republic Transit System, a project of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2003 which aims to provide a "reliable, seamless and integrated mass transit system that would be at par with international standards" through the unification of already-existing rail infrastructure under one transit system and fare structure.

The Philippine National Railways is a state-owned railway system in the Philippines, organized under the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) as an attached agency. Established during the Spanish colonial period, the modern PNR was developed only in 1984. It formerly operated around 479 kilometres of track on the island of Luzon, where most Philippine rail infrastructure is located. Because of this, PNR has become synonymous with the Philippine rail system.

A portion of the PNR network, specifically the Metro Manila portion of the network, is part of the Strong Republic Transit System (SRTS), and overall public transport system in the metropolis. It forms the backbone of all of Metro Manila's regional rail services, which extend to its suburbs and to provinces such as Laguna. However, other than reducing growing traffic congestion due to the rising number of motor vehicles in Metro Manila, PNR also aims to link key cities within in the Philippines efficiently and to serve as an instrument in national socio-economic development. However, the meeting of that goal has been beset with problems regarding degraded infrastructure and a lack of government funding, problems that are being rectified with current rehabilitation efforts. The rehabilitation of PNR, which has been touted by various administrations, seeks to not only tackle those problems, but also to spur Philippine economic growth through an efficient railway system.

The Manila Light Rail Transit System is the main metropolitan rail system serving the Metro Manila area in the Philippines. There are two lines to the LRT: LRT-1, called the Yellow Line, and MRT-2, called the Purple Line. Although the system is referred to as a "light rail" system, arguably because the network is mostly elevated, the system is more akin to a rapid transit (metro) system in European-North American terms. The Manila LRT is the first metro system in Southeast Asia, built earlier than the Singapore MRT by three years. The system is not related to the Manila Metro Rail Transit System, or the Blue Line, which forms a completely different but linked system.

The Manila Metro Rail Transit System has a single line, MRT-3 or the Blue Line. Although it has characteristics of light rail, such as the type of rolling stock used, it is more akin to a rapid transit system. It is not related to the Manila Light Rail Transit System, a separate but linked system.

One of its original purposes was to decongest Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), one of Metro Manila's main thoroughfares and home to the MRT, and many commuters who ride the MRT also take road-based public transport, such as buses, to reach the intended destination from an MRT station. MRT has been only partially successful in decongesting EDSA, and congestion is further aggravated by the rising number of motor vehicles. The expansion of the system to cover the entire stretch of EDSA is expected to contribute to current attempts to decongest the thoroughfare and to cut travel times.

A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on elevated rails above street level. Outside urban centers, rapid transit lines may run on grade separated ground level tracks.

Service on rapid transit systems is provided on designated lines between stations using electric multiple units on rail tracks, although some systems use guided rubber tyres, magnetic levitation, or monorail. They are typically integrated with other public transport and often operated by the same public transport authorities. Rapid transit is faster and has a higher capacity than trams or light rail, but is not as fast or as far-reaching as commuter rail. It is unchallenged in its ability to transport large amounts of people quickly over short distances with little land use. Variations of rapid transit include people movers, small-scale light metro and the commuter rail hybrid S-Bahn.

The first rapid transit system was the London Underground, which opened in 1863. The technology quickly spread to other cities in Europe, and then to the United States where a number of elevated systems were built. At first these systems used steam locomotives, with the term later coming to entirely mean electric systems. Since then the largest growth has been in Asia and with driverless systems. More than 160 cities have rapid transit systems, totalling more than 8,000 km (4,900 miles) of track and 7,000 stations. Twenty-five cities have new systems under construction.

The biggest metro system in the world by length of routes and number of stations is the New York Subway, however by length of lines the largest are the London Underground and Shanghai Metro. The busiest metro systems in the world by daily and annual ridership are the Tokyo Metro, Moscow Metro and Seoul Metro.

“He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb
Posted by at

Walang komento:

Mag-post ng isang Komento

Mag-subscribe sa: I-post ang Mga Komento (Atom)