The California State Railroad Museum
Sacramento Travelog #3
Saturday, 9 April 2016. 4pm.
This afternoon we visited the California State Railroad Museum (wikipedia page) in Sacramento. Like other destinations in Old Town it was an easy walk underneath busy Interstate 5 to reach from our hotel. Here are Five Things from our visit:
1. Paging Sheldon Cooper?
I remember from when I was a kid in the 1st or 2nd grade that a museum with trains was the first museum I was ever excited about visiting. It was the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. My parents and I didn't know the museum had a train exhibit until we stumbled upon it, in the basement, where it seemed placed almost as an afterthought.
Unlike some kids (and some adults, both fictional and real-life) I was never obsessed with trains. But as a kid I was impressed by their size and complexity. I was curious to learn more about them. Seeing trains in the museum at age 7 or so helped set me on a lifelong path toward STEM.
Visiting a railroad museum this weekend was something of a return pilgrimage for me. Again, I'm not some traing obsessed fool. Today was only the second time I've been to a railroad museum in the past 25 years. What interests me today is not so much the locomotives' imposing size and fascinating complexity, though as an educated engineer I do admire them. Instead it's the history and the cultural impact of railroads we can learn from.
2. The Gang of Five Four
Many of the museum's displays depict the Central Pacific Railroad (wikipedia page), which in conjunction with the Union Pacific built the first transcontinental railroad. The CP was founded in Sacramento in 1861 by 4 local businessmen: Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. None of them were railroad people, per se. They were local businessmen who'd made their money selling things like boots and shovels during the Gold Rush boom. The route for the railroad was planned by Theodore Judah. Basically, the other four invested in his idea. But they didn't make him a partner, just a shareholder. They were working to screw him out of his share when he died 2 years later.
3. Follow the Money
The four men's investment in a railroad company was well timed. They saw that the US Government had been trying to drive construction of a transcontinental rail for years but had been stymied by the politics of slavery. With the Civil War afoot in 1861, Congress was a) unburdened from having every policy debate turn into an argument about slavery- because the slavers had left in rebellion- and b) needed money to finance the war against said rebellion. The government issued bonds to raise money for construction. The bonds had to be paid back with interest by the railroads. The railroads were able to pay for all that because the government also granted them land, 10 square miles for every mile of track built, which they were able to sell. Giving away the land in remote places cost the government nothing. Of course, once that land was right along the transcontinental railroad line, it was worth a fortune.
Some of the men's names you might recognize. Stanford served briefly as Governor of California (largely to help advance his business interests, it seems). Later he and his wife founded Stanford University, named in honor of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr.
4. The Speed of Change, the Change of Speed
Materials at the museum pointed out that the completion of the transcontinental railroad delivered the single greatest change in speed of travel in the history of mankind. The first train all the way from New York to San Francisco made the trip in 3½ days. Ten years earlier such a trip would have taken months, sailing around the tip of South America or crossing the Isthmus of Panama overland (which is ironically where Theodore Judah fell ill with the sickness that killed him). That was a speedup of 30:1. The first transcontinental air service was only about a 10:1 speedup over rail at the time it arrived. ...And even today, air is not cost effective for moving trade goods like food and manufactured items.
5. Time for Time Zones
The broadening of rail travel across the US drove the need for timezones and clock standardization. Up through the late 1800s cities all had their own "city time". It was kept by the local government or by an influential institution. Basically you'd look up at the big clocktower in the middle of town, and that was the official time. With railroads operating nationwide it both became more important to have standardized time to conduct said operations as well as more possible to standardize it. One of the early means of synchronizing clocks was to set two to the same time while they sat side by side and then load one on a train to be sent far away.
Saturday, 9 April 2016. 4pm.
This afternoon we visited the California State Railroad Museum (wikipedia page) in Sacramento. Like other destinations in Old Town it was an easy walk underneath busy Interstate 5 to reach from our hotel. Here are Five Things from our visit:
1. Paging Sheldon Cooper?
I remember from when I was a kid in the 1st or 2nd grade that a museum with trains was the first museum I was ever excited about visiting. It was the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. My parents and I didn't know the museum had a train exhibit until we stumbled upon it, in the basement, where it seemed placed almost as an afterthought.
Unlike some kids (and some adults, both fictional and real-life) I was never obsessed with trains. But as a kid I was impressed by their size and complexity. I was curious to learn more about them. Seeing trains in the museum at age 7 or so helped set me on a lifelong path toward STEM.
Visiting a railroad museum this weekend was something of a return pilgrimage for me. Again, I'm not some traing obsessed fool. Today was only the second time I've been to a railroad museum in the past 25 years. What interests me today is not so much the locomotives' imposing size and fascinating complexity, though as an educated engineer I do admire them. Instead it's the history and the cultural impact of railroads we can learn from.
2. The Gang of Five Four
Many of the museum's displays depict the Central Pacific Railroad (wikipedia page), which in conjunction with the Union Pacific built the first transcontinental railroad. The CP was founded in Sacramento in 1861 by 4 local businessmen: Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. None of them were railroad people, per se. They were local businessmen who'd made their money selling things like boots and shovels during the Gold Rush boom. The route for the railroad was planned by Theodore Judah. Basically, the other four invested in his idea. But they didn't make him a partner, just a shareholder. They were working to screw him out of his share when he died 2 years later.
3. Follow the Money
The four men's investment in a railroad company was well timed. They saw that the US Government had been trying to drive construction of a transcontinental rail for years but had been stymied by the politics of slavery. With the Civil War afoot in 1861, Congress was a) unburdened from having every policy debate turn into an argument about slavery- because the slavers had left in rebellion- and b) needed money to finance the war against said rebellion. The government issued bonds to raise money for construction. The bonds had to be paid back with interest by the railroads. The railroads were able to pay for all that because the government also granted them land, 10 square miles for every mile of track built, which they were able to sell. Giving away the land in remote places cost the government nothing. Of course, once that land was right along the transcontinental railroad line, it was worth a fortune.
Some of the men's names you might recognize. Stanford served briefly as Governor of California (largely to help advance his business interests, it seems). Later he and his wife founded Stanford University, named in honor of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr.
4. The Speed of Change, the Change of Speed
Materials at the museum pointed out that the completion of the transcontinental railroad delivered the single greatest change in speed of travel in the history of mankind. The first train all the way from New York to San Francisco made the trip in 3½ days. Ten years earlier such a trip would have taken months, sailing around the tip of South America or crossing the Isthmus of Panama overland (which is ironically where Theodore Judah fell ill with the sickness that killed him). That was a speedup of 30:1. The first transcontinental air service was only about a 10:1 speedup over rail at the time it arrived. ...And even today, air is not cost effective for moving trade goods like food and manufactured items.
5. Time for Time Zones
The broadening of rail travel across the US drove the need for timezones and clock standardization. Up through the late 1800s cities all had their own "city time". It was kept by the local government or by an influential institution. Basically you'd look up at the big clocktower in the middle of town, and that was the official time. With railroads operating nationwide it both became more important to have standardized time to conduct said operations as well as more possible to standardize it. One of the early means of synchronizing clocks was to set two to the same time while they sat side by side and then load one on a train to be sent far away.