This time of year I always find something to look at. Old roadways, railroads, foundations, and stonewalls. They all interest me and gives me a chance to think how things were back then and how simple life was. And one thing I lways keep in mind, everything was built by hand or using enginuity. Very little machinery involved.
Mike, I think that folks tend to think of those earlier times as more
simple but in fact I am amazed by the engineering and technology of the time...and without the use of computers.
In regards track work, they used the same science that we use today, with spirals easing the transition into curves, as well as super elevation in the curves.
I particularly marvel at the work of Henri Giffard creating the injector. Using Bernoulli's theorem, he came up with a way to take steam out of the boiler, mix it up with cold water and still have enough energy to move the now greater mass back into the boiler against the boiler pressure!
I doubt that the folks back then considered their lives to be
simple! Yes, there was a tremendous amount of hand labor, but it was back breaking work and slow. However there was a tremendous machine tool technology for building locomotives. Back in the days of the narrow gauge, America was the leader in the precision machine tool manufacturing world.
Keith